living on the edge

Often a day throws up, quite unexpectedly, a common theme.

Case in point today.

The common theme? The nearness of death.

Two different individuals with whom I was speaking today, the one by chance, the other more purposefully. And both with a limited length of time to go before they die.

Like us all, I suppose. Except they both know how long (or how short) they've got. Roughly.

In the case of one, the person was told five years ago that the treatment being given to ease the pain would cut back her length of life and give her ten years at most. So she's half way through the countdown already.

The other person is in hospital.

Cancer. Right the way through his body.

He's only newly learned the full extent of it all. And the prognosis isn't great.

As little perhaps as three short weeks to live. At most probably nine months.

It fairly sharpens the mind, this immediacy of impending death.

What are the real priorities? What are the things I need to make sure that I do while I've still got the time and am able?

And because we're all on the countdown ourselves (we just don't know the time-scale quite), I guess we all should be asking those questions each day.

They're questions we're asking about our life as a people, as well, these days. What do we have to do?

There are loads of things we could do. There are loads of things it's tempting to do. There are loads of things people expect us to do.

But that's all missing the point. What are the things we have to do. As down-to-earth disciples of the risen Lord, here in this place, today?

We're trying to be more focussed. That's another way of putting it.

I think we do too much. All good things, no doubt.

But because we don't have a single, clear and wholly over-arching vision from the Lord, we end up with about a hundred and fifty visions. In pursuing which we end up more and more on a stretch.

Eventually something snaps.

One of the key things leadership does is figure out the vision which God has for us.

We have a vision-statement. But that's not quite the same.

What is it the Lord intends that we should be as his church? What is he calling us here in these days to be and to do?

What are his priorities? What is his vision?

What does he want us to focus on through the course of these next few years?

We need that sort of focus. And the primary task of our new leadership body is to give this people that focus.

The folk that I was speaking with today are living on the edge. Living on the borderline of time and of eternity.

Live there and there's always a certain urgency to life.

Step back from that border a bit and I guess you drift towards a state more like mediocrity.

We're trying to live on the edge.