commitment

We had about 100 pupils from one of the neighbouring primary schools along in the Hall this afternoon.

Scottish Opera were out on their rounds and visiting Blackhall Primary School to get them performing a half hour show called 'Fever'. They needed a venue and we were happy to offer them one of the halls.

With a hundred children and probably just as many parents and siblings and that sort of thing later on for the show itself, it was quite an occasion! A lot of shifting of chairs from one hall to the other to give them the seating required. And shifting them back later on.

I saw them when they started and, despite being run off my feet with things to do today, was persuaded to make it back for the actual performance later on. I'm glad I did!

My hat is taken off to the youngsters from Scottish Opera who tutored the children, and virtually starting from scratch, had them performing, with song and dance and costume, within 90 minutes of arriving in our halls.

'Fever' is a brilliant little educational piece, contemporary, too, in the way it picked up on the theme of the recent swine flu and built its little story round that scare. The performance was stunning. Absolutely superb.

Think 'potential'.

In less than 90 minutes these young folk from Scottish Opera, who knew their stuff, and plainly love their work and have a passion for this thing - in less than 90 minutes they had shaped and trained and drawn out from these youngsters a performance that was really quite remarkable.

Transfer the thought to the song and the dance of the life that the Lord means we live, and see what can be done by those who have a passion for the Lord and for his life among the children we are privileged to know.

If that's what can be done in an hour and a half, then what might be accomplished in a day and a half (a weekend away, for instance) or a week and a half (at SU camp, for instance), or even a year and a half - let alone a longer-term involvement with such children in whatever sort of context there may be.

Think what may be done, indeed, in twenty fleeting minutes every week at the SU group in school!

A passion for the Lord, a delight in the children, a commitment to use all your skills an impart what you've got to others ... and then, in the hands of the Lord, there's no real saying just what may be accomplished.

Commitment.

I learned today of the death way back in December of a lady I'd know many years ago now in Cumbernauld.

Hannah Macdonald. She was retired by the time I first knew her, having nursed all her life in the service of Christ her Lord. She was a godly, gracaious lady, warm and winsome in the care that she showed to us all: and her prayers were always constant, lifted with gratitude and urgency in equal measure before her Lord.

It was humbling to minister to one such as this, a woman of island extraction who'd sat in her time for a number of years under the ministry of Dr Martyn Lloyd Jones at Westminster Chapel in London.

A brief obituary from the local paper in Lewis was forwarded to me. And it was striking to read these words as almost the opening paragraph -

"Her passing marks a further diminishing of the Scottish Presbyterian virtue of a life dedicated to duty, discipline, and, above all, faith."

She'd been converted to Christ at the age of 19 in the great Lewis revival of 1936 and thereafter "dedicated herself to a life of Christian service." She served abroad for some 11 years in Nigeria and Ghana; and as the obituary puts it -

"Her tour of duty was not one of pleasure but was one of hard humanitarian toil. Much of her work was concentrated in leper colonies and she also paid particular attention to the care of children - many of them orphaned."

Commitment. Dedication. A life dedicated to the service of Christ. Not just a month or two, or even a year or two. But a life.

I think the obituary's right to observe that this is a diminishing feature of Christian living today. 'Shortterm-ism' is increasingly the order of the day. Keep your options open in case in time a rather better offer may come up.

Her prayers were the essence of just that commitment. Disciplined, daily, dedicated, earnest, interceding prayers in which she held the likes of myself before the throne of God and sought God's hand upon our lives.

What I owe to the likes of her only God himself can know. Oh that there might be more like her rising up with that passion for Christ and that longing, translated to prayer, for the glory of his name.

Commitment to Christ is being sold on the cheap too much, I fear, in these days in which we live.

Hannah is really a reminder of what such commitment involves.