the end

The end is always hard.

The last day of the Holiday Club is no exception. Great fun, the children all as high as kites and the team exhausted but thrilled.

I've been in and out of the Club today. The week's flown by and five days on from where it all began you wonder where the time has actually gone. Good times like this just fly.

Each day the Club begins and ends with a simple time of worship. Singing, a talk and some games. Each day another memory verse. Each day some different children out to lead the prayers. Each day the amazing puppet show relating what the story of the day will be.

It's humbling, moving, amusing, exciting, engrossing.

And so soon it comes to an end. We ended up with the song 'Power and might'. A fitting climax. Its last line is a resounding affirmation - 'He is the mighty King!' Climactic enough in itself it's sung three times, each time increasing in volume.

The last time round today it nearly took the roof off. What a wonderful way to end.

And then the goodbyes. That's always hard. And the team have lunch. And then it's on to the clearing up. And it all goes rather flat.

They're tired, of course. Exhausted, more like. But the buzz and the fun keeps them going from day to day. Until it ends.

And then it's the sadness that creeps across the spirit as this further little foretaste of the beauty of that other world, for which we're one day headed, is over for a while.

How short it all seems. The fun and the laughter, the games and the goodies, the warmth and the love, the friendships, the music, surprises, suspense and that sense of the presence of God.

How short it all seems.

Like life itself.

I was down later on at the Hospice again. Seeing a lovely lady there. As far removed from the children at the Holiday Club as you could get. Ninety years old and more.

And reaching the end. How short it all seems. Life. This earthly life.

The fun and the games and the friendships and love and the things that we've done and the places we've been and the people we've met and the hopes and the dreams that we've cherished and followed and sometimes have even fulfilled.

All over and past so quick.

Another bit of sadness on my soul this afternoon.

But it was good to be there with her as well this afternoon. I think she found some comfort in my being there.

For we need the reassurance that the end is .. well, not the end.

The real thing's still to come.

These good times here are just the barest foretaste of the best that's still to come and which will not ever end.

Which is really the message of Easter, I guess. And part of the reason we hold this Easter Holiday Club.

the best thing out

Thursday's always the deadline for producing the DVD of the Holiday Club.

Thursday evening we invite all the children to come with their parents and watch the DVD about the Holiday Club. We try to give them a feel of all that's going on. And we try to give them a sense of the message we're putting across.

They usually come out in sizeable numbers. Which is something they didn't ever formerly do when we held our so-called 'parents' nights'.

The DVD works well. As a resource, that is. The parents come out for this. A chance to see their children on the screen. A bit of entertainment. Visual communication.

So deadline day is a frantic rush. Completing the editing process. Creating the DVD. Then starting to run them off.

It sounds quite simple and easy when written in white and blue. But it's not.

And today it seemed that the whole of hell was throwing just all that it's got at the process of getting this DVD produced. It felt like a strange sort of battle was going on. As if the DVD might somehow have an impact on a lot of lives and see those lives being changed.

So a load of praying was going on as well today. I mean there always is. But sometimes there's a need to have a concentrated time of prayer about a particular issue. And this was one of those times. Or days, more like.

The theme of the week is 'The Great Escape'. And the 'star' of the story is God himself. He's the one who rescues folk and sets them free.

That's why we pray. He fixes things. Gets us out of scrapes. Opens up the way ahead when it seems like there isn't a way.

So a day like today when these problems arise, we look to him for 'rescue' once again. I don't know how he does it, half the time. But he does. And he did again today.

It was good to see the folk all out this evening. A chance to chat a bit as well.

There's a guy who wants to see me sometime soon. His children have come for a year or two and I had a chance to chat with him last year a bit. I've seen him once or twice as well about the village here.

He wondered if I'd be around the place if he popped in through the week sometime. He wanted to talk some more. Maybe tonight the message is getting home. Who knows.

There's another home where things are going on. Next door to the couple I've met with for over a year, there's another young family too. I don't know them at all. But their daughter's been coming to the Holiday Club and she thinks it's the best thing out.

Now the mother's starting to think that she should maybe be exploring 'church' herself. Take her child along to Sunday worship and discover what it's really all about. A case of sort of coming back for more.

Another lady, who's 'local' in terms of where it is she lives - she's been around here quite a bit in recent months: popping in for coffee through the week, that sort of thing. And this week, like a lot of folk, she's been around again and stayed awhile for coffee after dropping off her daughter for the Club.

She wants to join us here. Says she feels so very much at home among us here. And obviously, as well, her daughter loves it all.

One of the things that's striking for a lot of folk is the number of lovely youngsters who are on the team.

There are loads of these youngsers involved. They're really very gifted. They're amazingly committed, giving up their precious time off school or university, and some taking time off their work. They're brilliant fun, full of laughs and full, as well, of energy and stunning creativity.

And they love the Lord.

I think that makes an impact on the parents of the children who are coming to the Club. I think they see the number of these young folk that there are, and see the way they revel in involvement in this sort of thing - and they think to themselves, it may well be, this is how I want my children, as they grow, to be.

Today's been another good day.

A battle, like I say. But good.

I didn't get done what I'd hoped I might do. Mainly because of the technical struggles which occupied all of the morning and on beyond midday as well.

But, hey, the deadline was met! The evening was great. And the other stuff doubtless can wait.

more candles

Sometimes the whole amazing privilege of being a follower of Christ just blows me completely over.

The thrill of being somehow a part of something God himself is doing in the world today. Sharing with a team of folk whose gifts and love and total dedication is extraordinary to behold.

Some days that knocks me flat!

A week like this has that sort of effect. The chance for a whole load of folk to join with one another and ... well, use their creativity in such a way that together they create a week these children won't forget.

Most of my day again has sen me involved with them. I think they're all quite wonderful. And I'm humbled when I think of all the folk God gives me here to work with day by day.

Really humbled and sometimes deeply moved.

I mean one of the girls on the team was 21 on Tuesday. But still she was out. Up at the crack of dawn (at least, the metaphorical crack of dawn - she's a student on her holidays, so anything before 10am has got to count as early!) to play the drums.

Others come out of a second or third retirement. It must be exhausting for all of them. But still they're out and at it, attending to all the countless different tasks which must be done.

So many folk, prepared to give their time and strength to do those countless tasks there always are.

From making the soups and serving the teas (loads of the parents are in for coffee and lunch), to working the tough technology. And the man who's made an amazing Egyptian chariot for the children to construct.

It takes about an hour and a half of tedious work for each and every chariot. I think he's only glad that the numbers aren't more than they are.

Because this is on top of his full time job.

People give up a week of their annual leave to play their part. Teachers, who must by the time the holidays come have children coming out of their ears - they come back for more!

There are just loads and loads of folk involved. And it's loads of fun as well.

Maybe this is what heaven's really like!

burning candles

You can tell by the time at the foot of this post how late I am to bed!

I think I must be somewhere in the mid-Atlantic sort of thing, the way my work is going! Because here I am, still working my Tuesday just now - despite the date now letting me know that Tuesday's long since gone!

It's been that sort of day again!

Busy and tiring. But another terrific day.

We had a Games Night for all the family this evening. A chance for brothers and sisters and Mums and Dads, and who knows who all else, to come along and get a feel of what the Club is like.

Seventeen teams and seventeen games with a two minute burst at each. Hot work and brilliant fun. Mind you, I got a fairly easy job: holding the rope for all the teams of skippers when they came. And, wow, were some of the girls pretty good!

It's another chance to meet and chat with folk whose paths I maybe wouldn't otherwise cross. Seventeen different teams worth of folk! The place was mobbed.

In fact, there were only meant to be sixteen different teams and games. Sixteen's a useful number in these sort of situations, being the cube of two. Very neat and tidy.

But sometimes the neatness just has to get ditched.

A bit like the time when there just wasn't room at the house where Jesus was. So some desperate guys came in through the roof.

Hardly neat and tidy any more. But there were bigger things at stake. People being healed. Lives being changed. Neatness doesn't seem to matter all that much when those sort of things are happening all the time.

At least, it shouldn't surely matter all that much.

I sometimes think it's like that with us here. The neatness all gets ditched. There are bigger issues.

Like giving people here who haven't ever really glimpsed what God's about, a feel of what his kingdom's meant to be.

A barrow-load of laughs. The family all together having fun. Exercise and creativity. Adventure and excitement. A time to remember for ever!

That's what last night's games were like. Some folk said they hadn't had such fun for many years. It was that sort of night.

And if it's felt to me as I've worked on here right through the night - if it's felt like today will somehow never end .. well, maybe that's because that is indeed what the kingdom of God is like.

the great escape

The whole of this week we run a Holiday Club.

It's always brilliant! Masses of children, an amazing team of folk spanning absolutely all ages: and enormous fun.

We've run one over the Easter Holidays here for donkeys' years now and I wouldn't miss it for anything.

140 primary school age children, many of whom have little real exposure in any other way to the message of the Bible. And every morning here, for a week, they get a feel for what it's all about.

This year the them of the Club is 'The Great Escape'. Exploring the story of Moses.

Most of my days during Holiday Club weeks are spent in connection with this. We figured out a year or two back that perhaps the best way to get parents along and to share with them, too, what we're telling the children about, is to have a DVD evening.

That is, we make a DVD of the Holiday Club as it happens through the week: and then give away a copy of the DVD to every home on the Thursday night.

Which sounds simple, but is really quite a deadline to be working to. Given that there's not a lot that we can do before! By definition.

So the mornings are more than occupied with filming the different aspects of the Club.

Trying to make sure that all the different age groups are included on the footage that I get. Which involves a fair bit of planning and organisational skill. It also means I get to be among the different children quite a bit. A chance to chat and laugh. And meet their parents, too.

The rest of the day's involved in 'capturing' the relevant clips on the Mac (about an hour's worth of footage a day): then starting to edit it all and piece the thing together.

It's an early start (most mornings I need to be up and out and at it by 5am) and a late finish. A four day blitz of burning through the candles at both ends!

But it's worth it in the end. Effectively we get to preach the gospel in a hundred different homes. In a form which ensures that these people are able to hear.

Of course, life goes on as normal, too! There are still the coming Sunday services to be prepared. Still the different people I must see. In hospitals and homes.

But most of the day I'm here. Working away at the Club and preparing this DVD. It's a kind of sermon of a sort, I guess. It's just you wouldn't ever recognise it quite like that!

I know it takes time. But if that time thus spent enables someone, even one, to find the sort of freedom that God wants us all to know ... well, as I say, it's got to be more than worth it.

The great escape!

Good Friday

Good Friday has always been a special day for me. For as long as I can remember.

I recall as a child going to worship. Friday seemed an odd sort of day to be 'going to church'. Quite often it was a special lunchtime service which was held in St George's Tron. In Glasgow, where my Dad worked.

It seemed that the whole world sort of stopped.

This man who died that dreadful death had somehow made the whole world stop and think again.

I don't have any lasting memories of what was said at any of these services. I just recall our being there and it seeming quite appropriate. Easter wasn't Easter if it didn't start like this.

Today I've been largely alone.

In part that's been necessity.

There was so much going on in the early part of the week - and so much still to come, with the service tonight and a service of thanksgiving tomorrow as well, before the Easter Sunday services themselves - that there was much that I had to do in terms of basic preparation.

I've sometimes had to speak right off the cuff. Without a hint of any preparation. So I know that it can be done. God's Spirit enables me wonderfully then, I know.

But that's more the exception than anything resembling a rule. Feeding a people with what is the 'bread of life' - that takes time and preparation. I think even Jesus found that.

I know he could simply stand up on the spur of any moment and deliver truth in ways that were quite riveting.

But I know he also had time apart. And without that time, I doubt even he would have known the sort of fluency he had. The thing's not magic, after all. Miracle, yes, but magic, definitely no.

I need that time apart. The time to simply be with God and listen for his voice. The time to sort of figure out with him not just the what of all he wants to say, but also, too, the how.

Sunday morning coming is a special one. Easter Sunday. A family service. And a service at which the couple I've been meeting now for just about a year will be professing faith. Along with the 'girl' who cleans our halls so brilliantly.

I want it to be special for them all. A day that they'll remember as a highlight in their lives.

And that takes time and toil.

So today, as I say, I've been largely on my own. Working at these services of worship we'll be holding here. And preparing for the funeral tomorrow.

It's been good to remember, with no one around, how Jesus himself was that Friday so very alone.

I know there were the crowds who'd come to watch these wretched crucifixions with a morbid sort of interest and mind. I know there were the criminals between whom he was crucified. I know there were his followers and family, lurking in the shadows and the background of it all.

But the man was alone when he died. More alone than I think I can ever possibly know. Abandoned and forsaken by the Father whom he loved. And left, alone, to die.

I doubt I'll ever really comprehend how dreadful that aloneness actually was. I'm just aware that Jesus was alone.

So it's been good in a way (in the way that Good Friday's 'good', I suppose) to have largely myself been alone. And felt again the pain of that aloneness in the death that Jesus died.

For somehow we who follow him must also walk this way. God's resurrecting power is released alone through living that is somehow sort of 'crucified' itself.

For the power of God to come down on us here - as I long that it should - there is, and there must be, a cost. It isn't ever magic.

And I long that there should be such evident power, the blessing of God from on high, as we gather tomorrow to worship the Lord and give thanks for this man who has died.

I long that there should be such evident power when we gather again on the Sunday of Sundays and celebrate Easter again. The more so when there's the thrill of seeing these three fine folk stand up and honour Christ.

I want it to be special for them all. And it just doesn't happen at the click of a finger or two.

Sundays need their Fridays. Resurrecting power is related to the crucified demeanour of our lives. Life requires death, in a strange sort of way.

So tonight there was the service here as well to mark the death of Jesus and to recognise the life that flows from that.

It's always a special occasion. Solemn without being too sad. One of those times when people from the different congregations all converge. It's good to be one, remembering him like that.

Our being brought into a family. No longer being alone.

foot-washing

The local schools broke up today.

So this was the last of the daily assemblies along at the Royal High. The first years this morning.

It being the Thursday of Holy Week, and also the last day of term, I took the chance to speak a bit about how Jesus filled the last day of his earthly life.

Washing the feet of his friends. That sort of thing. The dirty jobs that no one wants to do. And then, in God's kind providence, I had a 'coup de grace'.

I'd noticed it yesterday also, when up on the stage in the hall. Someone had left a rotten old banana skin on the back of the central chair. Not that anyone sits on it much, I think. But the thing was there. Another day on. And still it remained unmoved.

So I used that as a simple illustration. The banana skins in life. All that dirty rubbish which is 'not my job' to move. The things we're always leaving in the hope that someone else will actually do it in the end.

When most times they don't. Because they, too, want to leave it for someone else.

So I picked it up with an audible 'yuck!' and explained that it's what Jesus did. And does. Removes the moral rubbish from our lives.

He made this 'foot-washing' ministry the hallmark of his life. It is, in fact, a lifestyle, I suppose. Doing the things that others will not do. Refusing to adopt the line that just because "it's not my job" I will not lift a hand to see it done.

My day had a certain symmetry. Since I ended the day with a service at night along at the local episcopal church. Where part of the worship involves this act of washing others' feet.

It was like my day was 'topped and tailed' with remembrance of Jesus' act. As if the Lord reminded me that from morning 'til night, through all the day, it's thus we're meant to live.

It's often in the little things. I've tried to remember that. Thinking ahead to what people are going to need. All the little courtesies. All the little tasks that must be done.

Removing the rubbish. Cleaning the dishes. Getting the tea. Taking peelings from the kitchen to the compost bin outside. Things like that. Hardly things you'd really want to 'blog' about.

Little things.

Strange how a God who's so infinite, massive and strong, should nonetheless be always so concerned for 'little things'. Re-assuring, too. And comforting.

Because most of my days are mostly comprised of ... well, little things.

And today's been mainly the same. A hundred and one little tasks needing done in the space that today has afforded me.

Catch-up tasks, since the last few days I haven't really had the time for them at all. Letters to be written. Services of worship to be thought through and prepared. E-mails to be sent on this and that. People to be seen about a range of little things.

Clearing away the clutter in life. Removing the dirt. Banana skins and all the other rubbish that we leave behind in life.

Washing feet is a way of life. The way.

questions

I need to learn brevity.

(I could leave today's post at that - and then you'd be assured I'd actually learned the lesson well!)

(But I won't)

My problem is that most of the time when I need to be brief I am usually far too long. And then when I'm brief ... well, it's then that I'm meant to be long. Sod's law.

One of the girls in her teenage years had asked me for help with the major dissertation that she's doing at this time.

She'd e-mailed me some questions and I'd e-mailed back some (brief and fairly rushed) responses. And then at night I was round at her house to talk things through again.

The dissertation's title was a fairly lengthy question. Does the existence of moral evil prove that God doesn't exist?

This is one of those times when it's actually really easy to be brief. But my simple one word answer, left the girl with 3,999 words still to find to explain why of course the answer's 'no'. She was finding it hard as well to explain the thing at length.

A lot of my time is spent with folk, addressing the questions they've got. Sometimes they're this pretty philosophical sort of thing. Sometimes they're more basic, pressing, personal, pastoral needs.

Sometimes, even, sometimes I'm addressing major questions which the person hasn't asked. Not yet.

In some ways, that's how days like this are filled. Settings where a group of people gather and I get the chance to talk.

The secondary school to start with at the outset of the day. A chance to speak to the pupils there (the second year students this time) and address with them the question as to how it is they're going to live their lives. What will be the epitaph that's written on their tomb?

From there it was on to the primary school. Well, in fact, the school came here. A service in the church. It was great!

The whole of the school was here. And all of the years were involved. Singing, dancing, reading, rapping, poetry. Such talented folk.

And I got the chance to speak to them, too, and tell them what Easter is really, at bottom, about.

A person. Who died. And came back to life.

The message is fairly brief!

The head and the deputy head, they stayed behind and we chatted over coffee for a while. A different sort of context where, again, there is the chance to be both listening to the issues people have and somehow sort of pointing up solutions.

Then there was the midweek lunch-time service to conduct. Different today, with a briefer word to allow us all to share the bread and wine and, during Holy Week, thus mark the death of Jesus.

There were some folk there who've not been out before, which was good to see. Including a lady who in a week or so's time will be a sprightly 101!

The place was mobbed at lunch as well. Not just the folk from the service in, but loads of others, too. It's brilliant seeing the whole place heaving in that way.

People. Just happy to be here, feeling at home. Some mums with their babies and children, for whom this is the only real contact they have with the church. And we, I suppose, are the message - the nearest they get to an answer to questions they've never quite framed.

There's a service of worship along at the chapel on Wednesday night during Holy Week. The 'stations of the cross'. A time to reflect and consider again the journey that Jesus made.

Alec, the priest, is having a dreadful time. He's already conducted a good thirty funerals - and that's since the start of the year.

What's going on? And how does he cope?

He says they're calling him Father Shipman now and wondering who'll be next. At least they're all still laughing!

But the questions remain. For him, and for us all. It's a strain, I can see, and it's taking its toll.

So, yes, I wonder, what's going on. And how does he cope?

He sort of answered the questions himself at the service tonight. He only makes sense of it all by seeing that he's called to embody his Lord.

This is the way of the cross. The path Jesus took.

That's the only answer he can find. It's pretty brief.

We're simply called to follow him. No matter what it costs.

a night to remember!

Today I got another 'practical' in this business of interpreting these constant interruptions to my daily life as really opportunities.

The Lord must want me to learn this lesson well, I think. And it certainly makes for a full and exciting life!

Tonight I was out pretty early, with a couple of calls to make. To be there in time for the second, I knew I was going to be rushed with the first. But I figured I could manage it OK.

I had to come to the halls first of all. And while I was there, just leaving to go, along came this gang of four ladies. 'Mature', I guess you'd have called them. Politely.

'Mature'. Well, at least in terms of their years. In terms of their outlook and behaviour anything but. As I was soon to discover myself.

They were lost. They were out for a night on the town. Which for them meant an evening of whist at a local bowling club. Well, 'local' if you lived about a mile or two away from here.

And they hadn't a clue where it was. Or how to get there.

(They were from the other side of town).

When I finally got the picture of where they wanted to be, I explained where it was and how much off their target they all were.

It crossed my mind immediately I had a choice. Tell them where it was. Or take them there.

The second was fraught with risk, of course.

I mean, me, one poor young man, stuck in a car with a squad of handbag-clutching women, all intent on a whist-filled night on the town...

I went for the risky option.

"Pile into the car," I said to them. "I'll take you there."

For the next ten minutes there was non-stop chatter. And shrieks of appreciation.

"You've given us all a night to remember!" the leading one said as they slowly manoeuvred themselves out of the car.

And she leaned right over from way in the back and gave me a mature and sloppy kiss on the cheek.

(I hoped this whole scenario was not being closely watched and misinterpreted by passers by! But that was part of the risk, I guess)

But the lady's words remained in my mind and it leaves me thinking if that's not really what every single morning, noon and night should be about.

Our giving the folk we're with a day and a time to remember. Giving people memories.

In some ways I think that's the essence of just how Jesus lived. He gave the people he was with a day and a life to remember. And bids us do the same.

Betty did that.

Betty who died a week or so ago, and for whom we held a service of thanksgiving here today. She gave us all such satisfying memories. Which made the occasion today a rich and enriching time.

In fact, there were two services. A service first along at the crematorium. Well attended. Dignified. And worshipful. With a chance to speak a little of the way that Betty lived, the reason for the impact that she had.

And then a service here. Longer. And more of a crowd again. Perhaps as many as a hundred and fifty folk. From all different walks of life.

Many from the village here, some who'd really known her all their life. And many from her working life. And many from the congregation here. And many others too from different points across her lovely life.

We packed a lot into a rapid hour. More singing by far than there usually is at services such as that. But Betty loved to sing!

We had a picture of her projected on the wall. The day she'd been the 'Gracious Lady' here at the local gala almost twelve long years ago. She looked terrific, with her great beaming smile.

And we half expected the picture thrown onto the wall to burst out in song as well!

She gave us a life to remember all right. And it was good to have time to remember, at least in its outlines, the life that she lived down the years.

There was a lunch in the hall as well, right after the service here. Maybe eighty or more staying on, which was great.

I don't know how the girls can manage as they do, but they always make occasions such as this just perfect. Sort of like a tiny little foretaste of the world where Betty's gone.

They made it a time to remember, that's for sure.

From there it was out and on to see the family of the man whose death I'd been informed about. His wife had died some thirteen years ago or so and I had been involved with him, and them, back then. A lovely family. And he himself, a really lovely man.

It was good to have the time with them. And it was, I suppose, a time with us all just remembering. A whole long line of pleasant, happy memories. What a wonderful gift to leave with the people who mourn. A lifetime full of memories.

It's strange how hard it is to switch. To switch, I mean, from being so much caught up with Betty's death - and all the raw emotions in my heart involved with that - to sharing with another grieving family and all the common ground I share with them.

Looking back on the day, I'm thinking now - I wonder if I gave them all, these different folk I've been with through the day, I wonder if I gave them all a day that they'll remember.

The pupils at the school. The services of worship. The visit to that grieving family's home. The time spent later in the evening with the folk with whom I'm meeting now quite regularly week by week to work through what the Bible has to say.

I wonder, did I give them all a time that they'll remember. Do I live my life, each day, in such a way - as Jesus did - that I give the people whom I'm with a day that they'll remember?

interruptions

It's strange how you sometimes get an inkling, at the start of a brand new week, of the way the week's going to go.

I think I just did today!

First thing up, I was along again at the local secondary school. Holy Week assemblies. This time with the S4 pupils.

I don't get long at the best of times and I have to work hard at holding their attention.

Today was worse than ever. I'd hardly started before the door to the hall was opened and in trooped simply masses of the pupils. Late.

This doesn't normally happen, I have to say.

Not their being late, because there are always loads of them late. But their trooping in like that.

Usually once the door is closed, that's it. If you're late, you wait.

But not today. My flow was rapidly stemmed. Before I'd even got into it much at all.

So once this new batch of pupils were all of them safely installed, I took up where I'd got to just before. Which was pretty much like my starting again.

Not long into my talk this time and the tannoy starts to blare. I had to stop. Again.

A whole long list of pupils who should report to someone somewhere at a certain point in time. None of them S4 pupils, I observed.

This also doesn't happen. Not usually anyway. In almost twenty years there at the school that's simply never happened. Not once. (Of course they haven't had the tannoy all that time, I appreciate).

It felt like a conspiracy!

Start again. Or pick up where I thought I'd had to stop.

And then, before I'd got much further on, the bell begins to toll. Five rings. The 'time-up' signal which felt like a boxer must feel when the ref starts to count him out.

My theme to the pupils had broadly been that time is probably our most valuable possession of all. By the end of the talk (if you could call it that rather than a round of staccato sentences), I was thinking I couldn't agree more.

Interruptions. There are days like that. Weeks like that.

This, I think, is one of them.

I simply need to adapt. All sorts of things unexpectedly come along. Require attention. Involve a whole re-jigging of my plans.

It's sometimes - as it was at the school this morning - really quite frustrating. It doesn't feel like much, if anything at all, gets done. It's all just very 'bitty' and it seems so incomplete.

But such, I guess, is the story of the world in which we live.

God's purposes so often interrupted by our waywardness and thoughtlessness and things we think important but which have, in fact, no lasting sort of relevance at all.

I guess he, too, must end up quite frustrated by the way we live our lives. Not that he shows it. He's really pretty patient when I think of it!

Interruptions. I won't bore you with the details.

But I started to think that maybe it's all about perspective. Those things I view as 'interruptions' could equally be viewed as something else.

Surprising opportunities which come my way to demonstrate the grace of God to others in their need.

Maybe that's how God himself regards our constant thwarting of his purposes and plans. The thoughtless 'interruptions' of our waywardness and sin.

Maybe the Lord simply sees them all as further opportunities to demonstrate his grace. Maybe that's why he takes them all in his stride.

After all, looking back on the day, the things I'd planned to do, I did in fact get done. Just.

The SU group which meets over lunch at the school.

A lengthy lunchtime meeting with a view to a day we're planning on holding in June. 'Lunch', you can see, is a term I'm using lightly to cover a whole long time of the day!

Preparing the message the service tomorrow involves.

Another evening meeting with some leaders here - and a bit of preparation that required.

And a week already full, getting fuller by the moment with another person dying and another funeral service to be worked at and prepared for through this week.

I reckon that's now some ten different bits bits of preparation (as in messages to give) that I've to do. And that's before I even think about the coming Sunday services!

Interruptions? No, not really.

More a case of unexpected, brilliant opportunities, togged up in fancy dress!

learning

It's 'Holy Week' next week.

A time to pause, reflect and ponder once again the heart of what this Jesus is about.

We try and make it special. And we try and free folk up.

But it doesn't seem to work that well for me! Not the freeing folk up side of things. Because I end up, what with all the extra services, being busier than ever.

It's partly because the schools break up as well, of course, next week. So they have extra services to mark the end of term.

Or, in the case of the local secondary school, a series of year group assemblies.

Which started today. Years 6 and 5 today. Then they countdown through the school years from the Monday to the Thursday of next week. 4 -3 -2 -1.

They have the assemblies at the start of the day. So I'm in there at half past eight, and I get maybe five minutes max to speak.

That's probably all they're up to really anyway, I guess. Anything more would be well and truly over-kill.

It's the not the easiest thing to do, this finding something pertinent to say. It's Easter, sure, and there are lessons galore in the whole of the Easter story, no mistake.

But there are loads of pupils present, from entirely different faiths, for whom the whole idea of Easter is a switch-off from the start.

It's a very narrow path I have to tread. But I'm glad of the challenge and try to ensure that they're all of them truly engaged.

They gave me a round of applause at the end. Perhaps because I didn't go on for too long!

But apart from anything else, it's contact. A face and a voice and a smile and a word. Touching base with where these youngsters are. In their environment, not mine.

There wasn't much time for all that much else before I was off into town.

I'd said that I'd go with someone to seek with them the help that they were needing.

A kind of re-assuring presence and another set of ears. Which was probably just as well, because there was in fact a lot (I mean, a huge amount) of information to take in.

It was a think a help. A tiny step, perhaps, and really quite a hard, small step as well. But a step towards the future, in the prayerful hope that God himself will somehow start to sort things out and build a broken life.

It was almost one by the time I was back. But the hours we were there were time well spent.

The guy that we saw was kind enough to e-mail later on.

He remarked how often the folk he saw said how much they felt really let down by their minister and their church. A sobering, humbling thought.

Faith without works is dead, I guess. That theme again.

People matter far, far more than any preparation that I might have done. And what such people need, most times at any rate, is not a powerful sermon, but just some practical help.

That's pretty basic Jesus stuff.

Which we don't always get.

Which we don't always give. But, hey, I'm learning.

communion

We were chatting last Sunday night with the older teenage folk about the things that fill our days. The things that keep us busier than we probably ought to be.

One of my fellow leaders quite casually observed that in the course of a day he'd get about a hundred e-mails. That's after the inbuilt filters have tossed who knows how many others in the cyberspace bin.

A hundred daily e-mails. All of which, presumably, require some sort of reply. No wonder our lives have got to be so busy.

Instant communication may be great, but it also sort of speeds life up and means you have to run just that bit faster to keep up.

E-mails take up a fair bit of time for myself as well each day. Not a hundred. It just sometimes seems like that.

Today's been a case in point.

In the case of most it's been a help to have had that instant contact with the folk involved. Especially those who, physically, are far away.

Expressions of concern and care from people far away are wonderful encouragements - especially when they're not about a week beyond the time you really needed them, but there and then.

The immediacy's good. And I'm grateful to God for that.

It's a strange and modern phenomenon. But there is a real 'communion of the saints' out there in cyberspace.

There's a website I visit daily which is right along those lines. A group of folk who daily interact with one another there on-line. They toss their issues around, talk through their Christian faith.

Short little bursts, a sentence or two at most, with their thoughts, their perspectives, their hopes and their fears and their dreams. They encourage and challenge each other. They support and affirm one another. They try to understand. They're keen to learn.

They're honest (sometimes painifully honest) and often quite amusing too. (The whole thing day by day is kicked off with a simple, but perceptive cartoon).

I kind of feel I know them all and count it quite a privilege to have this open door into their daily conversation.

For them, this is church. Relationship is remarkably real, albeit it's not face to face. Probably far more real than a lot of other 'places' where there is a sort of 'face-to-face' dimension to it all.

They are a real community. It is a communion of the saints.

If you want to see what I mean just go to http://www.asbojesus.wordpress.com/: and check out the comments each day, as well as just the cartoon!)

Having said all that - and having spent some time today myself in cyberspace, communing with some scattered saints in far off distant lands (and some that are closer to home!) - there isn't any substitute for meeting face to face.

So - Thursday again - I was round at the school for the teachers' morning coffee break. Face to face with the ladies at reception. The chance to chat. To smile and laugh and do the things that words themselves can never well communicate.

Body language doesn't really work so well in cyberspace.

And then a chance to chat with Chris, the guy who leads the SU group. The sort of chat you cannot really have in any sort of electronic way. Trying to figure out together what we'd do this coming Monday when we meet. It being Holy Week and all.

It was time well spent, for all that it was short. Face to face, iron sharpening iron sort of stuff - as the book of Proverbs puts it.

I think my life is a mixture of all this sort of thing.

Communing with God, for a start. Which isn't yet a face-to-face sort of thing.

I know it was said of Moses that he talked with God as a man will tak with his friend face to face. But for the likes of me this is still a future thing, this meeting with the living God, actually face to face.

Communing with God is an important part of my daily life. Which sounds, I realise, really dreadfully pious.

Which it's not. It's more a case of simply staying in touch with him. And he with me. I think it's wonderful. Very real. Very relational.

But the best of it is yet to be. The face-to-face bit. That's still to come.

There's the communing out in cyberspace, with people whom I cannot see and touch, but whom I know are there. Not visible at all, but folk that I can visualise. And I value their love and their friendship, their wisdom, encouragement, help.

Today, as I say, there's been a lot of that.

But communing with people across and round the table, too. Here, over coffees and lunch. And in their homes. And out for a meal at night with a whole load of the men from here, and also some of their friends.

That's the sort of face-to-face communing which is what, I'm sure, God's heaven will be like.

'Church', I think, is getting re-defined. And rightly so. Not in terms of buildings and those public acts of worship. But more in terms of people and relationships.

Twice today I heard folk say that 'church' for them is not a thing that happens on a Sunday in the buildings here. It's through the week and every day and more about the chance to stop and sit and talk with folk relationally.

So they don't feel too bad about skipping a Sunday service for 'communing' with others, with Jesus himself both present and active right there.

That's 'church', too, so far as they're concerned. Relational, worshipful, restful. Honouring God, and enjoying the Lord, and meeting with him and sharing him with their friends.

Sure, I know the Scriptures say, Let us not give up meeting together. But that's what they're doing!

It just doesn't look like 'church' (the way you always thought 'church' should look like).

I mean, go to many 'churches' of an old, traditional sort and what sort of glimpse do you get of this brilliant thing called 'the communion of the saints'?

I'm not trying to knock the 'church', as for ages it's been. It's just that 'the communion of the saints' is an essentially relational thing. And often enough, the way such 'church' is done, you could go for years, decades even, and 'communing' with each other wouldn't figure even once.

The whole thing's meant to be relational.

And so I'm learning, I hope, to shape my days along those lines.

follow the leader

When I was a boy I sometimes got a sort of 'educated' comic. I mean, I got other comics as well, sometimes, but this one was part of the deal.

It was called Look & Learn. Which I think is still on the go.

Its title, I guess, gives the lesson we need to learn. Keep your eyes (and ears) wide open and there's lots for you to learn.

The book of Proverbs in the Bible is a kind of earlier age's version of the magazine.

There are all sorts of ways we learn. All sorts of ways we hear the 'voice' of God. Because there are all sorts of 'signals' out there, 'signposts' which discreetly point out where we should be going.

Often it's like that at the school. I don't get to give the message at the Assemblies they hold there each week. At least, not so far this year. And that's us now some six or seven months into the year (the school year, that is).

You maybe wonder why I'm there at all. (Sometimes I do too!).

I help, most times, in handing out certificates to children who've done well. I generally get to lead the prayer, which there is most weeks. But other than that I'm mainly simply there.

Present. A face becoming familiar to the children as they grow up through the school.

But it's often the case that the message the children receive has a message from God to myself. My antennae are up! I'm listening for the 'signals', the tell-tale signs which build for me a picture of what God is tryng to say to me.

Today was like that as well. Today it was the youngest ones. The P1s to P3s.

One of the deputy heads was leading the thing today (the head was away). And the 'value' the school is majoring on this month is that of 'leadership'.

You probably get the drift of where this all is heading. And why it's all so personal!

The assembly began with a clip from a children's video (from a good few years back now). I don't have a clue what the video really was all about. But the clip was sort of 'self-standing' and its message was loud and clear.

The clip had a song as its focus, with children dancing along, expressing the point of the song.

'Follow the leader'.

It felt like a God-given 'signal'. A gentle and subtle reminder from God as to what he has called me to be.

Leaders give a lead. And most times that just means they have to take the lead as well. It felt like the Lord was somehow in his providence reminding me of that.

I have to lead. And simply trust that others follow.

Rather than the other way around - as in working away and waiting 'til others have seen that this is the way, and only then heading off with them all.

The clip from the children's video was really very striking in the lesson that I learned. Not least because it was so very visual.

The guy out front, so desperately vulnerable. Taking the lead - and if no one else had followed he'd have looked a total fool.

But that's the risk that leaders take. And I see that that's how I must lead as well.

So the school was good! Look & Learn stuff for me.

The service at lunch-time was sort of the same. I was leading the worship, reading the scripture and offering up the opening prayer. And attending to the sound system.

The talk, though, was given by Greta. She's really very gifted in this way.

It was Paul we were thinking about today. Paul well up in years and now at the end of his life. (He was one of the earlier followers of Jesus. A very able man.).

And again, this man was a leader. Prepared to go out on his own. And he did. But he knew that he wasn't alone, the Lord would always be there.

And he just took the risks of leadership and blazed a trail throughout his life for others who would follow. He followed Jesus. And in doing so, he gave a lead to others who would follow him. In following Jesus, if you see what I mean.

But the same basic challenge, the same crucial lesson, the same simple message from God.

Get out there and lead. Give the lead and take the lead and .. well, basically be a leader!

It all sort of tied in with my preparation, too, as I thought ahead to Sunday's worship services. So I think I'm getting the picture!