roof before walls

This afternoon I took the chance to walk all the way to the crematorium.

It takes just under an hour, gives the chance for the heart to do some useful pumping, and provides a space and time for serious thought (without any phones going off).

Plus there wasn't any rain today (for a change!).

After the service of thanksgiving was past, a guy came up and enquired if he might ask me a question.

I'm always immediately wary when that sort of thing occurs. What had I said or done? I feared it might be a rather heavy, theological question, that perhaps would totally throw me.

But, no.

"When you're at college," he asked, "do they teach you how to sing?"

I was still on my guard. I got used to such questions a long time ago as a child. "Can you whistle?" folk would ask: and then they'd follow it up with their ready-made punch-line - "..because you sure can't sing!"

Maybe those moments from long ago have left me slightly scarred.

At any rate, I feared the worst when the question came. I feared he might go on with a comment like - "..because they probably should do!"

However, the guy saw my hesitation (even if he couldn't quite read my mind) and he quickly went on to indicate how much they'd appreciated my singing.

Which took me by surprise. Usually it's what I say that leaves it's mark, not how I sing. At least, I work on that basis. And here it was turned upside down.

For this guy at least, it wasn't my message so much as my music which struck a chord. As it were!

It was, as I say, a little bit unexpected. The wrong way round in my way of thinking. I'd have said the message is more important than the music.

But then, I've been struck how it's often the 'wrong way up' that things are done. Not the way I'd expect.

I mean, I've been puzzled the last couple of days at the way they're building the houses beside the church. They seem to have started with the roof and got that all done before they've built the walls.

Unless it's a house for midgets.

Or they've been building the bulk of it underground - like the Iron Age House which I saw up on Berneray in the summer.

I think they're simply building it a different way from that I had expected. Roof before walls. Because maybe in Scotland not least, these mild but rainy summer days, maybe we need protection from the rain before we need protection from the wind.

Not what I'd expected. Roof before the walls. My music impressing a mourner instead of the message I'd tried to bring (though maybe that did, too, for all I know).

And I think the folk at the funeral found it better than expected. I think they maybe feared the truth being preached, and found themselves being pleasantly surprised to find that grace preceded truth.

That seems to be the order that the Lord follows. Jesus was full of grace and truth. Not the other way around. Roof before walls. The covering of grace before the pillars of truth.

I think I got the message across. The son of the man who'd died, this lovely Christian man who'd once been such a wild and wayward rock-musician in his earlier life, he and his wife came up to me after the service and said, "Well, you pulled no punches there!"

I think they meant I got the message across with no uncertain clarity.

But it was done in love. And I hope with a measure of grace pervading all and making the truth more palatable. The music as well as the message. Grace as well as truth.

I've thought of that a lot since that guy spoke.

Reflecting on the time I had at school today as well, it seemed that maybe that was true there, too. I was teaching the P7 classes about 'Baptism'. I think I got the basic points across.

But I was very aware that there not least, it is music before the message. Grace before truth. The roof before the walls.

In other words, the way I am with folk, the music of my manner and the attitudes I show - they're always as important as the message that I preach.

It occurred to me later on at night that that was exactly the case again in visiting out in Kirkliston in the evening.

I popped in later on to see the couple whose son had tragically died these few weeks back. For them it's getting really hard. Really starting to hurt. And they're struggling to cope. Who wouldn't?

What do they need most of all? Not God's truth, so much as God's grace. Not a message from a preacher's lips, but the music of a pastor's heart.

Not the walls, but a roof.

I hadn't expected a house to be built like that. And when people discover God's grace is extended before his expounding his truth, I think that too comes just as unexpectedly!