what it's all about

"That's what it's all about, isn't it?"

I was in this afternoon at a nursing home and chatting with people there. At the end I'd prayed.

And, like so often happens, that exercise of prayer sort of opened a bit of a flood-gate.

The man began to talk about the service that he'd been to in the home the day before. How the speaker had told the well-known, striking story of the man who'd long been paralysed being lowered through the roof and laid at Jesus' feet.

It had made a powerful impression upon the man. Not up to much himself these days. His eyes welled up with tears and - with a touch of difficulty - he smiled and said "That's what it's all about, isn't it?"

Which, of course, it is.

'It', I suppose, in the words that he said, being the business of life itself. And 'that' being our ending up there in the presence of Jesus himself.

It's not really all that complicated at all.

I like those guys, the friends of the paralysed man. They don't take 'No' for an answer. They're not put off by the problems there are in getting their pal to the Lord, what with the crowds all swarming around the place.

I mean, they didn't exactly have sirens way back in those good old days. It was every man for himself, first day at the sales sort of stuff.

Four men with a stretcher between them and a paralysed man on top ... well, they don't stand a chance. Common sense should have told them that.

But they do some 'blue-sky' thinking and they take some dodgy risks.

They go up onto the roof of the house, make a hole in the roof and lower the stretcher down. Right at the feet of Jesus.

I doubt either they or the man whose house it was were exactly covered by insurance. They risked quite a bit. But they got their friend where he needed to be. And remarkable things took place.

Some of the morning I spent going over a 'state-of-the-world' sort of statement that my good friend Nigel had prepared. It's a brief, ten paragraph summary of the challenges - and the opportunities - that the followers of Jesus are facing today.

He's a guy who's gone out on a limb. He thinks solutions rather than problems. He's a guy who can see that by getting up there on the roof and boring some holes we can actually get where we want.

And who's prepared to take the risk of doing that.

I'd love to be able to print his summary statement here, because it's really bang on the button. But it's only in draft at the present time and he'd asked me to give it a look.

I found myself saying "That's what it's all about!"

'It' being the business of following Jesus Christ and 'that' being the rising up boldly to take the risks there are in addressing the challenges faced.

People maybe saw those stretcher-bearing friends going up on the roof and thought that they were daft.

Like people maybe think I'm daft to have got up on Saturday morning at 1am and driven down to the north Wales/Shropshire border for the day. It's a 6 hour drive or so. And a 6 hour drive on the return leg, too, of course, so I didn't get back to my bed 'til 4am on the Sunday morning.

Crazy? I guess that some would say so.

But it meant I got to share in a family gathering. At the home of my son and his wife in a lovely little village called Selattyn. With my other two sons converging there as well with their girlfriends (one in each case, I should add for the avoidance of any confusion).

They were all there for the whole weekend. But I got to share the one full day that they all had there together. It was worth the long day and the long round trip.

And as someone said when I told them that's what I'd done -

"That's what it's all about, isn't it?"

Tonight, though, I have to say, I'm tired!