grace

Saturday was the Children's Gala here.

It's always a great day. Especially if the weather's good. Which it was. In the main.

The sun shone. And the whole of the local community - so it seems - comes out for a massive picnic.

It's a brilliant occasion. The folk who organise it work round the clock through the year to make it happen. And the result is terrific.

There's the chance to meet so many different people and to take in so many things. Everyone's there.

Including 'the king'. None other than Elvis, strutting his stuff across the stage and singing his famous songs.

(A bit too loud for some of the older folk, but the grounds are pretty spacious and you can choose to keep your distance!)

The guy spoiled the effect just a bit, I guess, when he said "Hi. My name's Danny". But he offered his singing for free and it added to all of the fun.

It's that sort of occasion. Everyone chips in.

Rosaly was this year's "Gracious Lady". And she filled the role superbly.

They always choose a person who's contributed to the community. And Rosaly fits the bill.

All that she's done in the Holiday Clubs down the years.

All that she's done in teaching the children each week on a Sunday morning.

All that she does as a sort of unofficial chaplain in the stroke unit of the Royal Victoria.

All that she does in heading up and running our 'Reception Area' here. The teas and the coffees and lunches each week.

She's the one who heads it up. And a more gracious lady you'd surely be hard put to find.

We had a kind of 'management team meeting' this morning. A sort of 'working breakfast', I think they probably call it in the business world.

Except it was a bit more breakfast than work. And it spilled over into coffee time as well. In fact, almost into lunch by the time we were done.

It's a regular time of planning, review and ... well, being grateful to God for all that we're able to share in with him in this work.

It's fitting that the 'gracious lady' should head it up. Because grace is really what underlies it all.

The folk who run it week by week, and the folk who come in to help and to serve - they're all just volunteers. They, all of them, do it for nothing.

And that spirit of grace pervades it all. Our hope and our prayer is that everyone should in one way or another experience the grace of God. Even if they don't really recognise it as such.

It's great to see the way that many folk who come in first of all as hard as nails - battered and bruised from the storms of life and often pretty defensive - it's great to see the way they bit by bit relax, and warm to these simple, kindly overtures of grace.

An experience of the grace of God.

I suppose that's what our life here, day by day, is all about.

We hd an interesting dicussion at night about that sort of thing.

One of the guys has kept on having a clear and nagging sense of the Lord really speaking with him along these lines.

Sort of along the lines of a 'monastic' way of life. Not the celibate, remove-yourself-from-the-world sort of thing.

But a life lived in community, with a focus on the Lord, and a life that would be lived the way the Lord has always meant it should be lived.

He'd thought about getting an island to start this community life. And he'd thought of it more in terms of sheer survival.

All the signs are that unless things radically change in the next few years we're likely to have crossed the 'tipping point' and things could go fast down-hill in terms of climate change. And he sees not a lot of evidence of political will to effect the sort of changes that we need.

Hence the idea of an island. A refuge. Or an 'ark', as he later put it.

We chatted at length about the thing. It excites me the way this guy is on the button and has heard this 'call' from the Lord.

We figured that maybe the 'island' could be a figurative sort of thing. An 'island' of believing folk, as it were, in the midst of a wider community. As a model of the way life can and should be lived.

An 'island' where the grace of God can be seen and known by one and all across the whole of life.

He's off on holiday soon. (Not to an island, I should add).

And he's going to do some work on this!