little things

Yes, I'm alive and well. And still a free man!

The fact that there was no post from me here yesterday caused some, at least, anxiety. It's comforting to know there are those who both notice and care!

I was busy. That was all. No late night interviews with local police. No grillings at the hands of MI5. No undercover filming at the dead of night.

Nothing like that at all, I'm afraid. Just kept on the go all the time.

The school and the children and all of the preparation that there is for all the different services coming up. And a meeting at night at Kirkliston again to jump through the necessary hoops that there are in order that things can progress.

(And transferring my 'industrial espionage' from the camera to the programme that I use to make a DVD. If you blink for too long at the wrong sort of place then you'll miss it - it really is short!)

Today has been much the same. A multitude of different, 'little' things requiring my attention and thus eating up the time.

'Little things'. Buddy Holly sang the song. But it often is the 'little things' that actually are the building blocks of all our daily lives. The things that make us, each of us, the people that we are. The things that make each day so very different from another.

Things, today, like my getting a 'register' signed.

It's a complicated system in a way, this business of a congregation choosing for themselves a new minister. The people who're entitled to a vote get the chance to use their vote in saying 'yes' or 'no' on a single nominee whom they're presented with.

Not much of a choice you may think. But they do get to choose who comprises the team that will come with the nomination.

And that's the first stage. Choosing the Nominating Committee. So there are rules in place so that everyone knows just who is entitled to serve in this way and who is entitled to vote.

Hence the primary need to get an 'Electoral Register'. Which everyone's had the chance to check. And which then must be signed.

By myself (that's the easier bit) and also by the guy who acts as sort of secretary to the whole big group of churches in the city bounds (that's the marginally harder bit - since it involves a trip up town, where parking can be awkward and the wardens can be vultures).

But it has to be done, since you can't make any progress till the signatures are all down there in place.

I tied that in with a trip through town to a different crematorium on the other side of town. For a service I was leading in thanksgiving for the life of a man who's been out in Kirkliston for years.

It's strange to take a service where, apart from this man's family, I barely really recognised a soul. Having been where I am for these many years, I've got used to there being always folk at these funeral services whom I've seen and have known quite a while.

Today I felt a stranger. And yet, despite that basic feeling, it's important that I somehow can convey to folk that God himself is anything but a stranger when it comes to times like this. He knows us all. In all the smallest details of our lives.

It's that I try to impress upon folk. And I do it, I guess, by painting a picture which is detailed, personal, warm. Not a vague and general sketch-like thing which could apply to anyone at all. But a portrait. Unique and distinctive and .. well, it could only have been that singular individual.

I think that came across OK. Though it's hard to say.

Between the service there, and getting there and back, and then as well preparing for the services tomorrow (there are two involved in this case for the person who has died) - much of the day was spoken for.

Preaching, preparing: presenting Christ. Making this person called Jesus a present and pressing reality for all of the people I meet.

With him as well, it really was the whole conglomeration of the 'little things' he said and did which built up such a picture in the minds of those he met and helped them see that really he is God!

And so it is with us, in all our daily efforts to 'present' him once again. The picture's built up in the little things. Together, they all of them count.