leaping into the large unknown

Coffee time at the school on a Thursday morning involves for myself a bit of a leap into the large unknown!

I've not arranged to meet with anyone. So the potential to be left just feeling a bit of a prune is always there.

I mean, it's their time. I'm very conscious of that. A brief and fleeting fifteen minute break from the rigours of shaping the coming generation.

They want to chill. Not have to find the wherewithal to chatter on politely with some guy who's newly landed, like some tourist from another place, expecting all the locals to be jumping to attend to all his needs.

I understand that. They want to relax. Take a break.

So I just go in and find a seat and on the spot I try to suss out quickly what the Lord himself is doing there today and how it is I best become his instrument of grace. How I best support and help, and give these folk the break that they're all looking for.

It's actually quite exciting in its way! Not knowing at all just who will be there and where I'll get sat (if anywhere) and whether there's scope for anything more than .. well, just being there I guess.

So, as I say, it's a bit of a leap into a largish unknown.

Today I got chatting to someone I'd not ever met. I could tell she was a student (since the name badge strung on ribbon round her neck said .. well, 'student'), so that's why I'd not ever met her before.

We got chatting a bit. She was on her own and me - well, I'm always prepared to venture out and discover the joys of being something other than the shy, retiring boy I am by nature. So the conversation flowed!

She's a mother of three, it transpired. Well, no, it didn't 'transpire' at all. I asked her straight out and she told me! Three young children, aged 10 and 7 and 5.

And as if that wasn't enough, instead of her taking a long, deep breath when her youngest went off to the school, she enrolled as a teacher in training. What she's always wanted to do.

It was what she said next which struck me most. "I don't want to waste my life on things that do not matter."

To be fair to the lady, I don't think she meant that being a mother and making a home was nothing much more than a waste of her time and her life. Because nothing could be further from the truth, of course. Nothing.

I think she simply meant that, given that she'd end up in employment of some sort, she wanted to ensure the work she did was not a waste of time. She wanted to work with children. To give them a start on the path of life which would shape them and mould them for good.

A noble aspiration which I gladly share!

It was really only minutes that we talked. But, hey, we seemed to cover really quite a lot of ground! And moments like that can give the whole of life the sort of focus that it needs.

So that leap into the large unknown was pretty good.

There was a further unexpected 'large unknown' a little later when I got back to the halls. A man came in whose wife had died some weeks ago and whom I've called on since. A very pleasant man and we get on well. He's that sort of man. Just great.

So in he came with a gift for me. His way of saying a thank you to myself.

It was a bottle of Scotland's other national drink (not, that is, Irn Bru). And quite unique. The label across the front is beautfiully personalised. Not with my name, I'm quick to add. But with the name of the church: and a lovely colour photo of the church as well.

Now this, I have to say, is part of the 'large unknown' for me!

I actually thought of Jesus straight away - and how the folk accused the man of being himself a drunkard and a glutton on account of all the people he would meet with and the places he'd frequent.

He got a reputation. And I thought, it won't be long, if this goes on, before I'll get a reputation too!

But he stepped out into what for him was very much the 'large unknown' (I mean, you plainly didn't do that sort of thing back then: you know, like hang about with people who were drinking and the like. Except, of course, he did!).

And we must, too. Step out into the 'large unknown'.

Engage with the world in which we live. A world that's just like that to which Jesus himself was pleased to come so long ago.

He stayed for a coffee (not Jesus [well, I guess he did too!], but the man who'd called in with the gift!) and we arranged to meet for lunch next week as well. Another chance to get to know the man and chat a bit with him.

We had a great time chatting today, I'm bound to say! It wasn't for long. But again, like the time at the school, the short little time we shared today was concentrated stuff. Like the whisky as well, I presume!

He's written some letters to his two grand-daughters down the years. And they've kept these letters he wrote. I can understand why.

And as we tossed around with one another this business of the letters that we write, I explained how my Gran had written a letter to me on my eighteenth birthday. Which I've kept all these years.

I explained what she'd said. And as he sat and listened, he replied - "That's spooky!"

Because he was recalling a letter his father had written to him a long, long time ago - which was almost exactly the same.

Some days, it seems, the conversations simply flow. Reflecting on it now, I think it's in the constant flow of just such conversations that Jesus would be found. Always. It's this that comprised his daily life. It's this that was his work. At least in a sense.

Which for me is a leap into the large unknown. Because my social skills are nearer the zero end of the scale than anything else!

But I'm learning to leap. And finding again and again as I do so each day that this realm of the large unknown is the place where the Lord is at work!

It was a bit like that again at night. A lady in the village here, she died a couple of days ago. I knew her very vaguely, I suppose. Well, knew of her more, I guess. It's more her daughter that I've had the contact with.

Anyway, I'd arranged to go round and see the lady's daughter - and a long-standing friend of the lady who'd died. Another of these 'large unknowns' into which I have to leap. I never know what to expect!

But again, there's the chance just to sit and to talk. And to listen to all that's being said. That more than anything.

Strange how all the words they spoke can serve to paint a picture for myself of who this lady was and what she had been like.

And then it's up to me. To take these verbal 'sketches' and then paint, myself, another verbal, life-size sort of portrait for the crowd of folk who'll gather at the service of thanksgiving next week.

The thing I'm always seeking most to do, though, at such services, is paint such a picture that what people see is not just a portrait of someone they've known (the person who's recently died), but a picture of Christ, the person we all need to know.

That's not the easiest thing in the world to do! One portrait, two people, in (usually!) three broad strokes of my verbal brush.

Which is just another leap into the large unknown.