fixing it!

The man came to fix the boiler this afternoon.

Which was great, since I couldn't get warm at all last night! But it also meant a couple of hours of my time today were spent with a stranger exploring the life of a boiler.

Two long hours when I might have been doing a load of other things. Which squeezed, a whole lot more, a week which was already pretty squeezed.

The guy was exceedingly pleasant, I have to say. Courteous and careful and happy to chat about all of the things he was doing.

He fixed the fault in less than a couple of minutes, mind! My spirits soared at that. I thought I'll not be detained that long at all.

It was finding the reason the boiler had failed which took the time.

In most other walks of life I guess that it's often the other way round. Diagnosis is relatively easy. The cure is slow and hard.

But he figured out what he thought the problem had been. A fault in the electronics which meant the pump shut off before it should. I'll take his word for that (though it means another visit in a couple of days).

The final diagnosis was an interesting one. He took his time to reach it, as I say.

But that was because he read through, and then pondered at some length, the finer print and pretty complex diagrams, which come with the equipment.

He even tried to explain it all to me! And I nodded with a dawning understanding as he showed me what it meant! The manual is beyond the likes of me. I need the thing explained in simple terms. He was good that way as well.

But the final diagnosis, like I say, was interesting. Both the boiler and pump were actually working fine. In themselves. The problem had come in the sort of link between the two. Which made me think of parallels in other spheres of life.

I love to watch a craftsman at his work. The careful, thoughtful, bit-by-bit analysis of where the problem lies and then the simple, step-by-step restoring of the thing to what it should be like.

An object lesson for a guy like myself who's eager to make things work. In life. In our nation's life. And in the lives of all of us. I'm keen to see things work.

Diagnosis and cure. And sometimes prevention as well, I guess.

The gas man does for boilers what the doctor does for bodies. And what, I suppose, I'm eager to be doing day by day in the body of Christ's church and in the 'body' of my nation's life.

Something's far wrong with our national life. That's for sure.

And I wonder if much of the problem today is actually bound up with 'connections'. I wonder if the hidden 'electronics', which help ensure the 'boiler' and the 'pump' of national life are working well in tandem - I wonder if it's that which has a fault.

I mean, our national life is not all bad. And things in many ways within the church of Christ are far from dead or pretty much defunct.

The boiler and the pump are working well. Or well enough. But I wonder if it's in the 'electronics' that the problems lies.

The power of the Spirit is there. The pump of grace and truth is there in place and functional.

I think it's in the way we followers of Christ engage with our society - I think it's there the problem maybe lies.

Our need is for that bit of hidden 'electronics' to be carefully renewed. The way that we 'connect' with, or engage with, our society. It's there that God's renewing grace is needed most.

We, too, we need another 'visit' from God's 'gas man', as it were! The Spirit of God coming back once again to fit us for future days.

Well, that was the bulk of may afternoon! With a meeting at night and my sisters being here in the morning ... well, the day was rather short!

But it was good to have time with my sisters again: and they popped across for lunch as well. Sorting things through in my mother's flat.

I can't say I was much of a help myself, or contributed very much! When I went across to join them there we seemed to do nothing but chat!

But that, I guess, is important always, too. Part of the hidden 'electronics' of relationships.

You can see that this is weighing on my mind!

The meeting at night was all about how the 'resources' (of people and buildings and more or less anything else) we have in the church today are best 'deployed' throughout the city here.

One building, we learned, needs major repairs at a cost of over a million pounds. Elsewhere, it transpires, there's work being envisaged on another large church at a cost of perhaps a million and a half.

Monopoly money!

But it made me wonder again about the time and the money and so much of our spiritual energy being pumped in the way of our 'plant'. Buildings.

Which the first and early followers of Christ simply did not have. And managed to cope without!

We've reverted, it seems, to the Old Testament pattern of seeing things all in terms of buildings, events and a day.

When the Jesus way is more about people, relationships, life.

The gas man looked at the boiler today and said straightaway, 'This is one of the old school sort, of course.' Of course!

He wasn't being dismissive or rude. Just stating a simple fact.

Maybe that's part of our problem, too, today. The model we use in our following Christ is actually the 'old school' sort.

Not the one it's meant to be today at all!

Maybe there's more than just the 'electronics' needs a change!