whipped cream

Making trifle for 150 people consigned me to the kitchens here for a fair length of time this morning.

Not that I mind at all! I like trifle and enjoy making it. It's just the quantities involved which make it take the time. It felt like I had half of the EU's food mountain stacked there on the work-tops. And the amount of cream to top the trifles off .. well, it looked like it could have plastered half the hall there was so much.

But I guess it'll all get eaten!

I had some help for some of the time. Which meant there was chat as well as a bit of company.

And the chat got us onto some pretty 'solid meat'! Not some idle chit-chat of a fairly 'milky' sort at all. But definitely 'solid meat'. As in discussing the work of the Spirit of God, the gift of tongues, and charismatic goings on. That sort of thing.

Good Monday morning, working-in-the-kitchen sort of chat!

It's striking how it's often in the context of our working at a task together these in-depth talks take place.

A bit like the cream, I was thinking later on. (There was gallons of the stuff, as I say, so there was ample time to think!)

The cream as it comes in the carton is liquid and runs where it will. But whisk the stuff, beat and beat the air all through the stuff, and soon (or not so soon, depending on the quantities - I was whisking three pints at a time) it starts to 'thicken': gains in volume.

I was thinking the chat in the kitchen today was really a bit like that. As if the pouring cream of friendly chat going back and forth soon somehow whipped in bit by bit the air of the Spirit of God.

And the chat got slowly weightier, filled out, expanded, until at length it really was just like the icing on the cake (or, more to the point, the cream on the top of the trifle!)

The heart of it all, as we chatted on, had to do, in effect, with the way that God's Spirit simply does not comply with the neat little boxes we make for him.

Are you only 'charismatic' if you do things in a certain way and speak in certain tones? Of course not! There isn't a need to pretend at all.

It's just a case of being ourselves. Being open to whatever it might be the Spirit chooses in his wisdom and his grace to do and give to each of us. Just the way we are.

Like cream. Being ready to be whisked about until the Holy Spirit fills us out, expands our hearts and minds, our whole experience. And sort of spreads us as the icing on God's cake, the rich whipped cream atop the satisfying trifle of God's message to the world.

I know, I know. The image that the Bible mostly uses to describe the word of God is bread. Not trifle. But you get the point! Let's not argue about trifles!

The more I thought along these lines, the more it crossed my mind that this whipping of the cream is not unlike what I spent the bulk of the rest of today involved in doing. Taking the cream of the Word of God and whisking it until it's simply filled throughout with the air of the Spirit of God. And ready then to be fed to the people on Sunday.

Commonly (and a lot more prosaically) called 'preparation'.

But that's what I'm doing when I'm preparing like that.

I mean, the Bible as the Word of God himself is nothing but the creme de la creme, the double cream that's all there in the carton.

Easily poured out. But it's the filled out, fluffed up, whisked and whipped variety we like. At least on top of a trifle!

And I was interested at night when the ceilidh came and the folk had had their fill of this cream-topped, special trifle - I was interested to hear the comments from so many folk that it's the custard and the cream on top they always so much like.

The ceilidh was great.

Worth all the effort involved in putting it on. The girls are simply great at that. They seem to do it all so effortlessly and make the whole hall look so good and make the evening run so well. And enjoy every moment themselves!

It's a blessing beyond all words having folk like that involved in the Lord's work here. They have an amazing ministry whose fruit it's hard to measure.

There were loads of folk at the ceilidh: I think we lost all count by the time it came. The youngest maybe three months old, the oldest well up in their nineties.

And from right across the spectrum of involvement in our life. Some who've been among us over years. Some whose only point of contact's been their pitching up for lunch. There was a girl like that, one of the young mums who meet each week for lunch - she brought her husband and her children and her parents too: and her brother, as well, thinking about it!

I mean everyone was there!

And it's always a huge big time of bonding for the folk who've only newly joined us and have hitherto not known that many folk. It's almost like a rite of initiation for them, I think. I think they sort of feel they belong after a night like that!

But again, I was thinking (I think quite a lot!) this ceilidh, too, is rather like the whipping of the cream. It's whisking the air of the Spirit into an ordinary group of folk. Giving to folk a fulness of life.

Maybe it's this that's really meant when we speak about 'whipping a people into shape'. (Actually, I don't think it refers to this at all: but it maybe should!). So working among a people that the air of the Spirit of God gets whisked into all of their life.

That's what I'm seeking day by day to do.

And sometimes, like tonight, when I get to taste the end result, it all seems more than worth it!