the promised land

I'd be hopeless on TV's 'Countdown'.

Tell me I've got 30 seconds left and the timer's started running - and I just can't concentrate at all. It makes me nervous.

I've only got thought for the time I've got left and how it's all just flying away and I'm not any nearer the answer.

In fact, I'm not even thinking about the answer, I'm thinking about the time. Or the lack of time.

Like I say, that sort of thing makes me nervous.

So the mail today didn't help. I had a letter which started with a 'Countdown' sort of line.

Ten years to go.

It was from the Church of Scotland. Technically my employer, I suppose.

It was actually an invitation. But it read, or felt, like an ultimatum. The clock is ticking on my working life. You're down to your last ten years.

To be fair, the letter reflected a genuine pastoral care.

They were keen to be helpful and give me the chance to prepare for retirement as well as I possibly can.

But it caught me cold and brought me up short, the heading was so abrupt.

Like I say, it makes me nervous, that sort of thing. I start thinking about the time, the clock, the seconds rushing by. Instead of the tasks to hand.

I don't really want to retire, I guess. That's where I'm at.

And I don't really think that I will. Retirement's maybe more a sort of comma in the elongated sentence of our lives: and not the final full stop at its end.

It's odd how this letter today was the third in a list of reminders I've had on the theme of retirement from work. All in the space of a day. Like the Lord himself was bringing the subject up. Which I really wish he hadn't!

Last night the matter came up. John was the one who brought it up.

He's been struggling with things at his work for a while and then, he declared, it's been just as if God has been leading him on, like he'd led the people of Israel on, 'til he was now, like the Israelites long, long ago, at the edge of the promised land.

"The promised land: it's there, it's yours." Retirement.

That's what he said it's felt like for him. "Go in and possess the land. Don't footer around like the Israelites did and wait who knows how many years. Go in and possess it now."

Early retirement. So he's grasped it with both his hands. The promised land!

Well, that was last night. It was an interesting, novel, really rather striking way of thinking of retirement.

Then today, a large part of the morning has been spent with a guy who's just, this very day, retired. I felt quite privileged! His very first day of retirement - and he chose to spend it with us.

We have a problem.

A technical, computer-type problem. Mainly to do with the database - which has basically lost the plot. Or entered into a kind of digital equivalent of early-stage alzheimer's.

There's an awful lot of data there, of course. And up to now the database has coped.

It does what you ask it to do. Gives you the lists you're looking for. Sorts the data for you and produces what you want.

Well, the guy who came is something of an expert in this field. He talked it through and summed the whole thing up by saying that we'd reached the point where really it was better if we simply sort of drew a line and started out again.

As in create a new database.

It crossed my mind that this was maybe just exactly how he felt himself today.

Retirement and all that. Draw a line and start again. A whole new sphere of ministry is maybe what God opens up the day that you retire.

I don't know. I've got ten years left to think about it, though. I should remember that.

It also crossed my mind, a little later on when I was out and calling on some folk now in a nursing home - it crossed my mind that this is maybe also just what death is like.

A line being drawn to give us then the chance to start again.

Our minds can get to be a bit like our dear database has grown to be. Confused, perplexed, and not so nearly able to produce the goods as once they did.

The folk I was seeing were all really very confused.

The data's all there in their minds. Same as in the database. It's just they're not so able now to sort the data through and then present it in an ordered sort of way.

I try to hit the buttons which will trigger lines of thought. Names of sons and daughters, or of friends and long-time neighbours that they've known. Certain bits of Scripture which they've known perhaps from teenage years or childhood or before.

But most of the time, while the data's there, the processing skills have all gone.

Death is God's way of drawing the line and simply saying - Let's start again.

The data's not lost! At least so the guy told me today. We can take all the data, transfer it across, so we'll not be just starting from scratch.

I guess heaven's like that as well. The data gets transferred across. Names and faces, people, places, memories. We won't be starting from scratch.

We just get to start once again. With equipment that finally works!

Maybe retirement's like that - a sort of practice run at drawing lines and starting out again.

To get us in the mood for that great day when God comes in and draws the final line and makes us wholly new.