prophet and loss

A long day to start a new week.

(Yes, I know it started yesterday. But you know what I mean).

Most Monday mornings I wake up tired. Even after a good night's sleep.

I revel in Sundays, but they leave me fairly exhausted. Mondays, ideally, are a day of a slightly lighter pace as I ease myself back into all that needs to be done.

Not today, though.

My father-in-law died on Saturday morning. A lot of this morning was therefore spent in attending to all the arrangements that need to be seen to.

It helps when I know the funeral directors. They're always good, this lot, and the man who was here was the man who was also involved with us all when my own mother died, a couple of years back now.

A quick trip up to Crieff in the afternoon for a meeting there. I'd missed the morning, of course - a pity, since everyone said that the ministry there in the morning had been very, very special indeed.

Back late afternoon, and a quick turn-around before getting out to the Guild where I was the speaker on their theme for the year - the 'call to act justly'.

I spoke about Elijah the prophet, and how he had challenged the king in respect of Naboth's vineyard.

The third of the three great episodes for which most folk remember the guy (if they remember, or have heard of, him at all).

The first - feeding and helping the widow of Zarephath. The second - Mount Carmel and confronting the prophets of Baal and affirming the Lord as God. And then this, the third - the king's next door neighbour, Naboth, who gets unceremonially turfed out of his property (and the land of the living) by Ahab's singularly unpleasant wife, Jezebel.

Quite striking these three different pictures we get of prophetic life. Because in some ways they seem to mirror exactly the call of God through Micah in regard to what it is he looks for from us all.

"To act justly [Naboth], to love mercy [Zarephath], and to walk humbly with your God [Carmel]."

Albeit not quite in that order.

Those present were struck (at least I gather so from what they said in conversation with me afterwards) by the 'immediacy' of the word of God.

I was bringing it up to date. Translating it into the context of today.

One lady said when the Scripture passage was read she didn't really see what it was on about at all. But half an hour later it was clear as day.

Since then I've been doing some work on the service there is tomorrow. There's a lot of extra services and things this week.

So the candle will burn quite late, I suspect, throughout the course of the week.