a troubled place

A call came in for me today. A man asking if I, and we, would be able to help.

His call related to a woman who'd been to see him. She was, he said, "in a troubled place."

It's been that sort of day. Engaging with people who know what it is, one way or another, to be in a troubled place.

"You have made me see troubles, many and bitter," wrote the psalmist a long time ago.

And I was thinking today how true that is, in a slightly different sense, for me.

I get to see a lot of troubled people, and many bitter troubles.

Today, as I say, has been full of that.

A sore and grievous bereavement in the death of a young woman in very troubled circumstances.

The untimely death of a middle-aged man, who'd come here with his wife and family convinced of the call of God to them to serve him here: and now his wife and daughter are left on their own, far from home: and the girl herself doesn't keep too well at all.

A woman whose husband has died, and now on top of that there are all sorts of sore and complex issues in relation to her son.

You have made me see troubles, Lord, many and bitter. And I get to see them because all the folk concerned are seeking to cope, and needing the help of the Lord.

As often as not they are seeking to make sense of a thing that perhaps will never make sense. Looking for answers which maybe they never will get.

People "in a troubled place" all right.

And a man was in as well today, aware, as we all are in these days, that we in the church in our land as well - we, too, are in a troubled place.

I always hold on to the second part of that verse in the psalm. "Though you have made me see troubles, many and bitter, you will restore my life again."

That's what I'm holding out to folk. A God who restores and renews.