french onion soup

Today I made French Onion Soup for the first time.

Partly on the back of Saturday's match at Murrayfield and on the principle that if you can't beat them join them. Partly because I hadn't ever made it before and therefore could guarantee variety.

And partly because onions were on special offer.

Mind you, I hadn't figured out in advance just how many onions I'd have to peel and chop into tiny little bits to make the soup. Nor how long the process would take!

But for a guy exploring new terrain, it seemed to turn out fine. Which seemed to me a positive sign.

Because it's new terrain we're being called to explore these days. And it's vaguely reassuring when my parallel explorations in the kitchen work out well!

There were a number of different folk to see in the morning. Once I'd made the soup, of course! Unscheduled meetings with people it helped to be able to see and talk things through with.

Like a ball of wool, life is never without its knotted strands. And a large part of what I'm trying to do is help folk with relationships. How to get on with one another in a world which is far from the way God meant it all to be.

In fact, when I was seeing a friend much later on - up town, before a meeting there I had - he casually sort of said that maybe we'd do better by translating Jesus' great commissioning words as not "Go and make disciples" but "Go and build relationships".

Now, of course, you can't twist Scripture just to make it suit. But the guy had a point. People aren't to be 'targets' at whom we aim the sword-like word of God. They're there to be loved.

And sometimes that's not easy. That's my point.

And that's why a lot of the time it's hard to work out how we best resolve the complex 'knots' there seem to be in our relationships. And the different folk I met with here this morning were addressing, one way and another, just these sort of 'knots'.

Douglas was in for his lunch again today. We were joined by someone else who'd taken the chance to call in with a view to seeing me.

One of the lovely things about Douglas is the ease with which he takes on board such unforeseen and constant interruptions to the lunches that we share.

He got used to that, of course, when my Mum was alive, as she would often come and join us at the table. I think we both miss that so much!

But the open-ended nature of the table that we share is something of a picture of the way God means 'community' to be. A microcosmic picture of our being church today.

Seated at table, enjoying food, inclusive, relational, and always ready to change. And the chance to pray as well. To shoulder common burdens as we bring them to the Lord.

It's always good to have the chance to chat a bit with Douglas. The Lord had been speaking with him. Making things clear. Through three distinctive dreams and then a part of Scripture that he'd read.

That's how it is. The Lord makes things pretty clear. He gives us clear directions.

I've been pretty aware of precisely that already this week. Thinking about our Sunday evening services over these coming weeks.

I've been trying to hear what he's wanting to say. And over these last few days it's all become quite clear. I find it quite exciting!

It's a change of direction from what I had planned. But I'm sure in myself it's where he is now pointing us. The challenge to build community.

As the people of Israel were taught by Moses, as they stood at the borders of the land that they'd been promised - taught by Moses about how to live in community - so that's God's burden for us as well.

We, too, are standing, like Israel of old, on the borders of the 'promised land'. A whole new realm, a whole new way of living. Life lived in the realm of the promised Holy Spirit.

And we have to learn just how to be 'community'. Which is all about relationships. But relationships on the widest sort of canvas.

Relationship with God, with one another and with planet earth as well.

How to build community. How to live as the people of God - and not just as followers of Christ.

If we don't learn that, we're really in the soup!