real food

I may in a sense be beginning again, but life gets back to normal pretty quick!

Varied, surprising, demanding.

It started with making the soup. One of the nights that I was down south I'd opted for soup at the restaurant. Cauliflower soup. Quite the most delicious caulie soup I've tasted for a while. It put me in the mood.

So I aimed to sort of replicate it here today. No recipe or anything like that. And I've never made such soup before, so the whole thing was a culinary experiment. Which included pears, creme freche, and a fair old dash of ground nutmeg.

It didn't taste too bad!

I much prefer to cook that sort of way. I gave my son a cookery book which works on similar lines. Nigel Slater's Real Food.

He doesn't really go in for weighing out quantities (Nigel Slater I mean. Though I suppose my son's the same). More feel and instinct and how the mood takes you. Do your own thing.

What I do with the 'larder' the Bible affords is much the same, I guess. I'm trying to take those raw 'ingredients' I find there in the Scriptures and serve them up in ways that are both nourishing and pleasing to the palate of the heart.

Like the whole business of making soup, that all takes time. Preparation time. I've tried to give some sort of time to that today. But there's not been much opportunity.

Other things. Other people. They all come crowding in.

Which is fine by me. Most of them unexpected, which makes life unpredictable.

A man who dropped by on the off chance that he'd find me in and free. Wanting to chat through the Global Day of Prayer (coming up on May 11th). How we might mark it here in this part of town.

It's a world-wide thing and really quite exciting when you see how many different folk are all involved across the globe. All joining together to pray. Millions and millions together. If that can't shift mountains I don't really know what can!

So here in the city of Edinburgh they've planned to use the seven hills and concentrate on seven major aspects of the city's life. And pray for the city in that sort of way.

So this guy, Douglas, was in to have a chat about the way we'd mark it here on our own local hill - Corstorphine Hill.

Then I had another Douglas, too. The usual one this time. Lunch and a time of prayer with him and a chance to catch up (it's been weeks since we've met) and chat things through with him.

There was a mother who's been involved with us here for a while, wanting to see about having her son baptised.

And another young woman whose grandmother died who was wondering if I would conduct a service of thanksgiving for her.

The lady who'd died belongs to another church. But she didn't get on with the minister there (that happens, I know!) and so they wondered what to do instead.

So this young woman had thought of myself, since she'd been at a funeral I'd conducted not that long ago and had felt that was just what she'd like for her own grandmother.

I don't like to tread on the toes of a fellow minister. But he seems quite happy and more than understands the situation. I've been there myself and know what it's like. But I'll need to give him a call and clear it all with him. Courtesy. That sort of thing.

Some time with another minister, keen for the chance to come along one Sunday night and share at least something of the work that he's involved in through the city. Making arrangements for that.

Seeing a number of others about different little things. Fixing up time for a longer chat and the chance to work things through.

People.

I'm grateful to the Lord that it's people my life revolves around.

I don't make soup as an end in itself. It's always because there are people. People with stomachs who're looking for food and looking for pleasure in that. People who are hungry, people who are cold, people who are glad of the chance both to meet and eat with others.

People with all their strange and funny idiosyncratic tastes.

But always people. That's why we make the soup. It's not an end in itself.

Nor is the study of Scripture. It's always with people in mind. These people here among whom I live and for whom I'm seeking the best. I want to be feeding their souls.

But it's not something that I can do on my own. It's only together, the whole big crowd of us here - it's only together we can ever give people a taste of what Jesus is like.

So tonight we all met. A formal sort of meeting. But nonetheless a chance to meet. And a chance to try and hammer out the future that God points us to.

Quite a bit of the day was spent preparing for that. I wanted to try and explain to the folk just why we are changing the pattern of leadership here. Which isn't easy. Explaining it all succinctly, I mean.

At least it made sense to some. A couple came up at the end of the night to thank me for the leadership I give. I appreciated that.

They've not been here that long. Not quite a year. But they've got the drift of what it is I'm on about and find themselves excited by it all.

I was glad that they spoke as they did. I need such warm encouragement from time to time. Just like it always helps a chef (not that I'm claiming to be much of a chef myself!) to know his meals are palatable and have done the eater good.

Which is why, when down in London, I had made a point at the end of the meal of thanking the staff and conveying to the chef the pleasure it had been for me to sample what they served.

We all need such encouragement.