another year, another day

Already the 5th of January!

It's really rather worrying how the time flies by. I mean you barely blink and you're five days into the new year.

All the festivities are gone in a flash.

Reality soon kicks in.

The first full week of 2009 begins for me with two funerals. One today and one tomorrow.

Sadness and sorrow for all of the people involved. Life always seems short, no matter how long it may be a person has lived. And the folk who've died were neither of them all that young. Up in their eighties.

I looked in at the Guild this evening. Mainly to see the technology was working all right. And then to close it down later on.

One of the ladies was speaking about her grandfather, a man well up in his nineties at the time. How he used to say when his friends would ask if he was looking forward to his telegram from the Queen that when you reached his age you were only looking forward to your next meal.

I guess it's about perspective. When you hit that age you don't really plan too far ahead in the future.

I remember my Dad used to say that each day was a gift. We don't ever get it again.

And I'm conscious tonight that another of God's good gifts has been and gone. Another day, with tasks to do and people to see and the chance to reflect on it all.

People sometimes ask me why I write these posts. Lots of different reasons, I suppose.

But one of the reasons is simply that I think the Lord himself adopted such a pattern from the start. Whatever you make of the account that's given in Genesis chapter 1, it's pretty clear God isn;t in a rush.

He takes his time and at the end of every day he stops and looks, or 'sees' what he has done. Reflects on it a bit. And concludes, yes, that was good.

That's part of what I'm doing at the end of every day. Stopping and rehearsing all the many different parts the day has held; reflecting on it all and seeing ... well, yes, it isn't always good, I guess, except in the sense that I've sensed God's presence with me and it's good to be alive.

And it's good to be able to share with other people in the sacred sort of moments in their lives. Which the passing of a loved one always is. A sacred sort of moment. Holy ground.

I often find it hard, demanding, sore. But it's good nonetheless. A privilege.

Today was no different in that regard. There's a lot of work preparing for a service such as this. I don't use notes, but write a script in full.

That takes time and effort, sometimes hours and hours. I like to take a 'run' at it, sometimes through the night. The phone doesn't ring in the dead of night for one thing. Which means there aren't that many interruptions.

The service itself, of course, is past in a flash. But there's something almost timeless in the sense there is of God being very present at that time.

That's not a thing I can conjure up. I have to simply trust that he'll turn up. Because if he isn't there, the emptiness is worse than any words could ever tell.

But he does turn up. At least, it seems to me he does. And it felt again today like he turned up.

There were crowds of people present. More than the chapel could seat, so there were folk left standing by the doors and up the sides. A tribute to the sort of man he was, the man who'd died.

A gentle man. I think that phrase best summed him up.

All the days he lived were tiny little chisellings which fashioned out this final, single phrase. A gentle man.

And I'm left to wonder as another day goes by just what this bit of 'chiselling' has fashioned in my life and what the phrase will be which at life's end will be the Lord's own epitaph upon my life.