just another day

Most days are fairly varied. And this was no exception.

Armistice Day.

So I was along first thing at the Royal High for their marking of the day.

They hold a special assembly for the fifth and sixth year pupils, in which wreaths are laid at the memorial door (remembering former pupils who gave their lives in the first world war), and at the memorial windows (in memory of those who fell during the second world war).

The occasion is always a solemn and special time. Today's was all the more so.

It was an extended, half-hour session, with a couple of extra features. One of the teachers gave a mini-bio of some of the former pupils who had lost their lives. That made the whole thing really very personal indeed.

And at the end there was a brief, but poignant powerpoint presentation set to music which highlighted just why we do indeed remember all these folk.

The pupils, I'm sure, would have found the thing compelling. It would have struck a chord with them.

Which was good to see. Sometimes occasions like this are given little more than a passing nod. This one touched the heart.

Wednesday.

That means there's a lunch-time service. And today it was Psalm 127 that I was expounding.

It's a great psalm, and most folk there would have been reasonably familiar with it - Unless the Lord builds the house ... That one. You know, the one that's often quoted at the start of a wedding service.

But I'm not always sure it's properly understood. It's about the way in which we learn to collaborate with the Lord in the work that we do. Or rather, in the work that he's doing, the work in which we're invited to share.

And it's about people and relationships being the heart of all our work. God's work in creation, after all, had people and relationships in mind.

We do well not to forget that.

People.

So, appropriately, a good deal of my time today has been spent with people.

All sorts of people. With all sorts of different needs.

I had a long and useful time, fo instance, with someone who's been faced by some fairly awkward decisions. Sometimes it's not always easy to know what to do. And it's helpful to run the whole thing past someone else.

It was a case of my being a sort of sounding board, I guess. I'd prayed a lot about this time that I would have, and asked the Lord for wisdom.

Not so much to know the right answer, as to know how best to help the person come to see the course that should be taken.

I think we were both very conscious of prayer being significantly answered through that time. Which was humbling and yet exciting as well. The Lord is very wise and very good. And it's great to have such evidences of his hand upon a person's life.

I meet a lot of people, of course. Some, like the person I've mentioned, by appointment. Others more by 'chance'.

A lady looked in, on spec, as it were, wanting to see 'the pastor'. Which is me, I suppose, though I try and encourage the others here to see themselves as pastors too. In their own way.

We tried that one to start with but the lady was fairly adamant. The pastor was who she wanted to see.

It was shortly before the service was due to start, so I didn't have long. And I'm still not all that sure just why it was me that she needed to see.

Sometimes we don't have a clue what's going on in a person's life: we don't need to know, I suppose. It's a case of leaving the issues with the Lord and being ourselves available for him to use just as he will.

Sometimes it's more than a clue that I have as to what is going on, of course! Like the family later on whom I was meeting at our halls. I'm all too well aware of what it is they're going through.

And this was a chance to offer them help in a very practical way. Like the Lord said to Moses at the burning bush - I have heard their cry and have come down to rescue them.

I've certainly heard the cry of their hearts, and I've been to see them before; and now there's a chance to offer them practical help as they seek the way forward at such a difficult time in their lives.

We'd arranged to meet at the halls. And I think what they saw and heard was enough to give them a glimmer of hope in a setting that's really so dark.

Meeting.

There were others as well I was meeting with later on. By arrangement.

With a view to thinking through our worship here.

We're committed to the notion of 'a gift-based ministry', but probably tend to use the phrase too easily. So we've been trying to give some serious thought to working the whole thing out in the context of our worship here.

A little while back I asked a lady called Sheena to take on board responsibility for seeing to the content and conduct of our morning worship.

She's a very able person, gifted in a lot of ways which made her seem so right for this responsibility. Which has proved to be the case.

I've been seeking to see the same sort of pattern emerge in regard to our evening worship too. And a team of folk has begun to evolve.

We were meeting to chat the whole thing through. Morning and evening. And sort of everything in between.

Worship is not a 'random' sort of thing which just magically happens. I try to ensure that it is characterised as being -

Personal: in the sense that it is at heart a personal relationship with the Lord; that it involves the whole person (body, mind and spirit); and that it reflects the varying gifts and personalities of the people that we are.

Relational: in the sense that it is a corporate, communal activity, centred on our relationship with the Lord himself, but involving in more than a merely cursory sort of way our relating to one another - that, after all, is why Jesus died, that we might be one.

Accessible: in the sense that it is to be intelligible (both to the Lord and to all who share in our worship of him), and something to which the doors are opened wide (literally and metaphorically) to one and all.

Innovative: in the sense that, because it's the Creator we worship, because we're made in his image, and because in Christ he's pleased to do a new thing in our lives, our worship should give expression to our own creativity - not change for change's sake, but genuine creativity.

Scriptural: in the sense that it flows from God's Word to us, and is always a response to him, and in the sense as well that it accords with what the Scriptures teach.

Earthed: in the sense that it should be always rooted in, and related to, the down-to-earth and day-by-day situations from which we have come and to which we have to return - it's not, in other words, a different world we enter when we gather on a Sunday to engage together in worship: it's more a case of bringing into sharper focus the worship of our daily lives and addressing that together to the Lord.

PRAISE.

How those six principles get worked out and find expression will (and must) vary. And that's the sort of issue we were trying to address tonight.

It's a learning curve. Always.

Curving up to the Lord in praise.