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.