fixing the mess

Another day when I didn't seem to stop that much at all.

One little incident seemed to sum it up.

I was late getting back in the afternoon, and when I arrived there were two little girls out playing in the street.

It's a cul-de-sac so they're often out on their bikes. One of the girls lives there, the other is there with her grandparents - and I know her from the local school.

The two of them looked quite troubled, so I asked what the trouble was.

It was the latter girl's bike. She'd managed to get a length of rope entangled in the chain. 'Woven' might be a better way of describing it since it was well and truly intertwined at about three different places and all coiled up round both of the sides of the hub of one of the wheels.

A mess.

And she was worried as well. Worried that her grandparents might give her a row since the bike wasn't her's but her smaller, younger cousin's.

Well, it didn't take really all that long - and yes, I was later still with the tea. But the bike got fixed, the fears were allayed and the girls were back on the road.

Another little 'Jim'll-fix-it' adventure.

And a picture of what my daily life is like, I guess. A lot of it unexpected. With people whose lives have one way or another gone off the rails, or hit the buffers, or ground to a dreadful halt.

Talking of which, the brake lights on the car had ceased to work. So I'd had to make a sizeable, lengthy detour (the garage is not that close) to see if they could fix the thing for me. (I'd tried and failed).

I saw it as a providence of God that the guy who served me (Stephen) was the guy who'd also been dealing with me a few weeks back when I'd had the car in for a service. And he recognised me right away.

He couldn't fix it there and then so he asked if I would leave the car and he'd get it done (at least in a temporary way) that afternoon.

A rapid juggling of ... well, not so much what I'd planned to do, but how I planned to do it. I had to get back to the halls here since I was already well late for meeting someone here. And then I had another call that I'd arranged to make, relating to one of the funerals I'm conducting over these next few days.

And, of course, later on I had to get back, across the town to the garage to get the car. And then get the thing back here!

The day was really tight enough time-wise as it was! I'd been out to Kirkliston at the end of the morning to see a man there whose mother had died. I was seeing the lady in the village here, as I say, whose husband had died.

And I had to be out at Kirkliston again pretty sharp at the start of the evening. Seeing the family who'd known such wretched tragedy in the sudden, awful death of their 20-year old son: just, in a sense, simply being with them and having a time of prayer with them all as well.

A special time again.

And then a lengthy meeting of the leaders of the church out there at Kirkliston which didn't see me back here till, well, what's the time, I suppose about 10.25pm or so.

Like I say, it was one of those days. A rope-in-the-chain-of-the-bike sort of day. Which is pretty much a Jesus sort of day, I think, if I read the Bible aright.

The guy gave his life to that. Fixing the messes, helping us back on the road.

Whcih brings me back to the 9.40-42 resolve.

I started this morning to pray like that. I stopped and had that special time of prayer and prayed that what I'd read of Peter doing, reaching out a hand to this woman Tabitha and helping her up and putting her on her feet again - I prayed that that's what we'd see Jesus doing here as well.

I think I just did!

And for good measure, too, the Lord threw in the kindness of a young man by the name of Stephen who fixed not my bike but my brakes - and kept me on the road.