'sausages'

"It's the sausages that are really giving me the stress!"

So said Jennie, the girl who's doing all the organising of the wedding this coming Saturday. She was here tonight, along with the audio systems guy.

It was good to be able to run through the whole thing with them and put them at their ease. And have some fun as well.

But it was a surprise when she said that it was really just the sausages that were giving her the anxiety. I'd have thought it might have been a hundred and one other things before it came to ensuring the sausages were all cooked.

Often though, it's the little, maybe unexpected, things that catch us off our guard and cause the stress. The big things we're sort of psyched up for. We know what's coming and get ourselves prepared.

And maybe it's more the smaller things which catch us unprepared. The bit of straw on the camel's back. That sort of thing.

The children along at the school today were asking, I guess, a similar sort of thing.

I'd been in, first of all, at the P4-7 assembly, where they had 'speeches' from six of the pupils contending for the post of Head Boy and Head Girl. I think it comes to a vote from the children of Primary 7 - and this was their final pitch.

They were all really good. Excellent in fact.

And after the assembly I was in with the Primary 4s. It was meant to be all on the theme of what I did, but it tended to stray into all sorts of deep, philosophical questions.

I mean, it was meant to be a question and answer session. It was just the questions took more of a license to roam than I'd thought they maybe would.

Sod's Law kicks in, I think. I get a classroom full of 50-60 children and I randomly pick on one for the first question.

And here's my easy starter for 10 - who is God's God?

This is another thing that college doesn't really teach you. How to answer hugely deep philosophical questions like that in a simple and easy way. I did my best.

It wasn't the only question along those lines. But some of them, certainly, had to do with what my work involves.

What's the easiest thing you do?

In some ways, I said, the easiest part of all I do is simply watching God at work. And one of the things I enjoy the most, I added, is coming in to the school.

Which is not an example of me being a sook or anything quite like that. I really do enjoy it, the children are always so eager and keen, and I'm just a child at heart.

But the question got me thinking through the day. What is the easiest thing I do? Is any of it easy? Is any of it all that hard?

What are the 'sausages' in my life that occasion any stress?

I'm not really sure.

I enjoy it all and I'm always so conscious of the Lord being always at work.

Like I was out later on at night to Kirkliston, sometime after 9pm it must have been. To call on the family where the 20 year old son had ttragically died a few weeks back.

They'd mentioned in passing the last time I was out that today was their daughter's birthday (her 18th I figured, from what I'd previously learned). So I thought I'd go out with a small bunch of flowers, as a tangible way of letting her know that the Lord himself knows and understands the turmoil of emotions in her heart on a day like that.

Engaging with a family I've never met before at a time of dreadful tragedy - I was thinking that's not something easy. And even tonight, arriving there, and finding the place packed with all sorts of friends and relatives I've never met before - that's not easy either, I suppose.

But, I mean, the Lord's right there, and it's lovely to see the reaction of folk when they catch just a glimpse of a God who cares, a God who remembers and comes.

I was thinking about some other things the day has brought. Trying to figure out what the 'stress-inducing sausages' really are in my life, day by day.

The school for the first part of the morning. Then straight back here to a couple of further appointments I had with two very different people. Addressing different needs.

I'd said to the children that I'm basically just a sort of teacher. Teaching folk what God says in terms of how to really live.

Which means listening, of course, to him. And being with other folk. And, as often as not, having simply to try and work through with them what the Bible has to say in terms of their own present and personal problems.

Much of my days are spent like that.

Listening out for what the Lord is saying. Which involves taking time apart, and at some length, to get to grips with what it is he says: as well as doing that listening all the time to what he says when I'm immersed in conversation with whoever it may be I'm talking with.

And being with just all sorts of different people at so many different stages in their lives. With so many different problems. So many different shapes and forms of 'sausages' which make them suddenly anxious and concerned.

I think Jennie's fears were allayed tonight. The sausages will be fine!

Sometimes it's just the chance to sit and chat things through that people need. And those small little tokens of God being there and always there in charge.