fresh water

The fish were the first to benefit from my labours here today.

I have these two little goldfish swimming around in their tank. A sort of therapy for anyone who calls. And for me as well.

But they require, like anyone else, a bit of care and attention. And today it was time to change the water in their tank again.

It's a lengthy operation, since there's quite a lot of water in their tank of course. I have to pump the old water out, a manual (and if I'm not very careful, quite a messy) operation: then clean the filters and all their smallest parts: have the fresh, clean water ready to hand, prepared in advance until the temperature's right and the chlorine's been removed: then refill the tank.

Like I say, a lengthy operation. But it needs to be done. And because I have to leave a modicum of water from the past still in the tank (for the sake of 'continuity'), there's still some particles of old, residual 'dirt' which float around the tank.

So to start with the water's still as murky as before. Or so it seems. Strange how much the dirty contaminates the clean. Rather than the other way around.

I may have to change it again pretty soon. And make a better job of it this time!

But then I thought that living out our daily lives as followers of Christ is pretty much like that.

We swim in a tank called the world which is murky to say the least. We need God's great renewing grace again and again and again. Like the fish need the new, clean water pouring in.

So I started the day with a task which directed my thoughts to the need for the Spirit's renewal. And I wondered perhaps if this was a sign of the way things will be here this year. A fresh and full outpouring of the Spirit of almighty God. I pray it may be so.

There's a leaders' meeting coming up next week. And there's quite a lot of reading that they'll need to do before the meeting comes. So a fair amount of the morning was preparing material for them.

As in writing the stuff. Collating the stuff. Printing the stuff. Folding the stuff. Then finally doing the pigeon-holing job, a bit like the postie doing his daily rounds.

It promises to be an important year. So this meeting's an important one. I want it to be right. The time spent in preparing is a part of that. But there's a lot to do.

People think the time around New Year is pretty slack. Not that much on. Not much to do.

How wrong they are! There's absolutely masses - and I'm basically chasing the clock towards the end of this week. (Nothing new, you say!)

But once the afternoon set in, I got a fair amount of preparation done for Sunday evening's service. I got the drift of what it is the Lord intends to say.

And I managed some more work on setting up the visuals for the morning service too.

There's a baptism at the Sunday morning service (well, two, as I said a day or so ago). And that always takes a good deal more time.

It struck me it's the visuals which take up the most time. Preparing the word is lengthy enough. But putting it all into visual form ... that's a very lengthy process.

I sometimes think of the time I'd save if I simply dispensed with the visual side of things! But then I think that it is indeed the visual which is so very much the heart of God's good news.

The word became flesh after all. The verbal became visual. Maybe we only really 'see it' when it can be seen. Which sounds rather deeper than it's meant to be!

But the thought spurred me on to go and see a lady who has not been well. To 'flesh out' the presence of Christ as it were. Make his presence a sort of 'visual' thing.

She lives a fair old bit away, so I took the car. But she wasn't in! I left my card. A token, I hope, of the care and the prayer that's surrounding her life at this time.

I wonder how often I'm 'out' when the Lord draws near. And he simply leaves his card, as it were. I've been busy at other things and missed the time I might have had with him. Face to face with him. In the flesh sort of thing.

Which reminds me - there's a book with that title that I'm meaning to buy and to read. Maybe this is just a further prod to do just that.

And maybe that's bound up, in some strange way, with knowing that renewal by the Spirit of the Lord: that great, outpoured renewing of the waters in our little tank!