plumbing

The plumber was round at the house yesterday afternoon.

Nothing very important, just fixing a drip which had suddenly started to show. So he wasn't there for all that long.

But long enough for a bit of a chat. He's a down-to-earth guy whom I like a lot. Does the business, as the saying goes. And the sort of 'earthy' plumber whom you'd gladly recommend to anyone. (I do!)

I was asking him how he liked his work, since he's obviously pretty good. But I think for him it's just a job - and though he maybe likes the work, I suspect it's the way he's treated which has made his job a thing he'd really gladly do without.

Which is a shame, since, as I say, he's really very good at what he does and great to have around.

Anyway, he turned the question back on me and asked me if I liked my work. And when I said I loved it all, he actually stopped completely in his tracks, the guy was so surprised.

Which made me stop and think through for myself just why I love it all so much.

And part of it's the sheer adventure of it all. No day's quite the same. And living life with Jesus is just one big, long surprise! I love it. As I said!

Sometimes there are little things which happen which encapsulate the whole amazing beauty of a life lived in the company of the Lord.

Like this afternoon.

I'd spent the morning mainly round the Halls here. Making soup to start with - it's Tuesday, after all. Then seeing some folk (who chanced to be around) and chatting through some issues with each one. And doing a bit of catching up on letters and the like.

A fruitful sort of morning in its way - though nothing I could point to as the product of my time.

And then the 'fraternal' at lunch. Meeting with a range of different pastors from the area. Again, although there wasn't much that really merits any mention in a post, it's good to have the chance to meet like that and talk.

Which we did! I doubt if I've ever heard a table of eight pastors make quite so much noise, the chat was so intense and so sustained! It would have made a Pentecostal revival meeting seem more like a Quaker time of prayer!

In the afternoon, I popped across to the surgery once again.

Liz, the Practice Manager, had handed me the other day a little gift, by way of conveying the family's thanks for the service I'd conducted for her uncle at the graveside back last month. So I had a letter of thanks and I thought I'd simply pop it in. In person not by post.

So there we were, the two of us, chatting away in the only place of privacy there is (the surgery's a busy little place!) - in the corridor outside the set of toilets that there are.

And I smiled to myself as we chatted on, because this, I thought - this is pastoral ministry, the way it's done by Christ.

A woman whose only connection to 'church' is the friendship she's formed and the times that she's shared with us folk. And here she was, in the sequel to all of the sorrow she's known, and all of the struggles she has, with a chance to unburden her soul.

In the place of work and right outside the toilets that they have.

It seemed to me a symbol or a picture of the essence of the call we have in Christ.

And in a strange sort of way it was that which was furthered impressed on my heart when I then went on to call on a person the other side of town.

I won't go into the details here, but the gist of it's simply this. The person had faced in recent days a deeply traumatic demand. She'd effectively had to minister love in a place where the squalor she found had made her quite literally sick.

It had affected her very profoundly. She was shaky and edgy and obviously hugely upset. No wonder.

She needed to talk. Which we did.

She's been herself a follower of Jesus long enough. In a sense she knows the score.

Except, like most of us, it's not in fact the score he wrote she knows at all. We've sanitised that score beyond all recognition. Made it quite respectable.

Nice people. Nice places. Nice smells. Nice times.

But, hey, the places Jesus went, the people Jesus met, the things that Jesus bore ... they weren't nice at all. Not one little bit.

The stench of a leper's gaping sores. The agonised pain as your limbs get attached to a cross. That sort of thing. Not nice at all.

What she had had to do was just what Jesus did. He went among the squalor of humanity.

He brought the cleansing grace of God to bear upon some pretty wretched specimens of our humanity. And made things new.

'Now follow me,' he says.

These were the 'images' left with me by the Lord today. Two fairly similar pictures of the life that Jesus lived.

Like he was saying all over again - this is what it's really all about: now you go do it too.

Where people are. Their place of work. With the smell of wasted living and the squalor of real need.

It isn't nice. But he does make all things new!

Which makes it quite exciting day by day to live with him. Not always 'nice' by any means. But I wouldn't want to miss it, not at all.

And, in a strange sort of way, reflecting on it now, it's actually not that very different from the work a plumber's often called upon to do!