life

I was through meeting folk in Glasgow today.

I went by train. And arriving in Queen Street station I noticed a man with a sign in his hands: the sort of thing you see at airports at the arrivals bit as the passengers come through the gates and need to meet up with a person they've never met.

This guy caught my eye.

Partly because I haven't seen that at a station before (not that I'm the world's greatest traveller). Partly because I was first off the train and the man was right at the turnstile.

And partly because of what his sign said.

LIFE.

I smiled. It seemed to me a very striking picture of our busy modern life.

All manner of people rushing around - but not really sure where life in its fulness is found. They need someone to point them on the way like that and say, 'you're wanting LIFE? Then here is where you'll find it.'

Then I smiled some more.

Beside this man with the sign saying LIFE there was another (much younger) man. Just standing there. Hands on hips.

And across his T-shirt were the two short words -

GOING NOWHERE.

I thought for a moment I should stop and introduce this second guy to the first.

But then I remembered this was Glasgow ... and, well ...

I mean, this could have been some evangelistic campaign the church in Glasgow was running for all I knew. Presenting the radical choice that faces us all.

LIFE ... or, well, GOING NOWHERE.

I left them to it. And pressed on to my meeting.

And a very strange thing took place during the couse of the meeting.

Not entirely unrelated to the scene at Queen Street station.

There was a man at the meeting I've known for years, but whom I haven't had any contact with for ages. As we moved towards the lunchtime break the Lord laid it very clearly on my heart that I had to go and speak with him.

Plain as daylight.

I was glad I did. He'd had the same intention: knew he had to speak with me.

It soon came out that something I'd said in another public meeting, maybe 8-12 years ago now I suppose, had really hurt his wife. And had left him feeling resentful towards myself.

All these years.

Unwitting and unintended on my behalf. But hurt and harm through a combination of my naivety and insensitivity.

It was good to have the opportunity to apologise. I hope he had a sense of just how contrite I was. He was very gracious himself in response. And not a little relieved, I think, in at last getting all of this out.

There's a psalm which came to mind. It starts -

"How good and pleasant it is when brothers dwell together in unity."

He said, "I don't want to be resentful towards you. I want to treat you as my brother."

This matters so much to the Lord. Brothers dwelling together in unity.

These are important days in terms of the purpose of God. He's taking the lead himself, it seems, in addressing those things that have kept us as brothers apart. It matters to him.

And why?

Because of what's said at the end of that psalm. It's there, where brothers are dwelling together in untiy, it's "there the Lord bestows his blessing, even life for evermore."

LIFE.

Back where the day began.

Maybe the sign was for me!

Maybe the Lord was reminding us all that we're going nowhere until we sort these things all out in terms of our relationships with each other.

Brothers.

Brothers who must stand now by each other in the challenges we face.

Brothers who must dwell with one another in a Spirit-given unity. Which can be costly and painful.

"How good and pleasant it is when brothers dwell together in unity. ... For there the Lord bestows his blessing, even life for evermore." [Psalm 133]