a bad day at the aquarium

Gavin was in today.

He works for a firm who supply us with one of the printers we use, and from time to time he comes in. Just to check up that everything's going OK and we've not been encountering problems.

Service. With a smile. And a coffee. He's always glad to take time for a cup of coffee or tea. And a bit of a chat as well.

We got speaking about the recession. How it affected a firm like his, since a lot of the smaller firms with which his company deal have gone to the wall.

His line was simple and clear. In a time of recession the big fish eat the little ones.

He struck a raw nerve.

It hasn't ever crossed my mind before that Gavin is prophetic. I don't suppose it's crossed his mind either.

But it crossed my mind this morning as he spoke. And it occurred to me, too, that maybe my fish have been secretly reading this blog. Yes, you read that correctly!

Remember what I wrote here yesterday -

We depend on people dying. And maybe that's what's missing in much of the church today.

There's too little dying.

I fear that my fish maybe took this to heart. Today has been a disaster down here in my 'aquarium'.

I came in this morning and found that two of my fish had died overnight.

I have five fish in the tank (well, 'had', I suppose I should say): two large and three small. One large and one small had died overnight.

I immediately took the remaining three fish out and put them in a bowl full of water, with a view to my cleaning out the large tank. Next time I looked there were only two!

Don't ask me what happened. Logic dictates that one of three possible things must have happened while my back was turned:

1. the big fish swallowed one of the smaller ones (possible, I guess - it hasn't ever happened before in the tank, but there's always a first time for everything!)

2. the small fish jumped (or was flicked by the fin of the big fish) out of the bowl (more than possible, I suppose, but I couldn't find a trace of the fish at all on the floor or surfaces nearby)

3. the small fish simply dissolved (presumably in tears of grief and sorrow - but, of course, being immersed in water has never had that effect before on the fish and seems singularly unlikely)

My money's still on option 1, since there isn't a trace of the poor little fish. The big fish eat the little fish. To quote Gavin.

But the thing got worse. While I took the large tank out of the room to clean it all out, the big fish plainly got fed up with the bowl and tried an aquatic version of The Great Escape, leaping over the rim of the bowl in a daring imitation of Steve McQueen on his motor bike as he flew above the barbed wire.

It didn't do the fish any good, I'm sad to report. It was lying there prone on the floor when I returned. Limp and lifeless and lost.

A bad day down at the aquarium!

'Too little dying'? These fish have more than made up for it!

And all that's now left is one little fish in my sizeable tank.

We need to speak, Gavin. The big fish may have eaten the smaller fish: but if that's the case then there seems to be some sort of great aquatic justice going on.

A kind of 'pay-back' time for the greed that the big fish displayed.

'Trauma' like this, a miniature Job-like experience of multiple loss, makes you stop and think.

And I'm wondering if this is somehow a 'sign'. A visual reminder that sometimes the church is allowed by the Lord to decline, deplete and die. Until there's barely a single sole (pardon the pun) that's left. Sort of 'remnant theology'.

Is this what we're facing these days? Is this what lies ahead?

A wide-scale pruning in numbers, and a radical dying to self?

Is this how the spiritual 'recession' we're facing these days is addressed and resolved by the Lord?

More than just the 'big fish' (as in larger congregations) eating up the small ones. That happens. I'm not sure how healthy it is, but it happens all right.

But more than that. A lot of radical dying has got to go on.