changing Scotland

Where were you?

If I was asked that once as I passed through the lunch hall at school today, I must have been asked it at least twenty times!

To get to the classroom where we hold the SU meeting, I have to pass through the lunch hall. And, therefore, as well, through all the teeming mass of girls and boys who are having their lunch.

And I hadn't been at the assembly they'd had this morning. They wanted to know just why. Every single one of them. One after the other.

Where were you?

Well, it's nice to be missed. That's for sure. And I do miss the thing myself when I can't get along on a Thursday.

But after a while I figured I might have done better if I'd brought along a tape recorded message, narrating my movements through the morning. Explaining just why I hadn't been there.

I mean, after a while I started to feel really guilty, as if somehow I'd reneged on some binding agreement, as if I'd desperately let them down. AWOL sort of thing.

Where were you?

Well you're probably wondering the same!

I was away in another city this morning, seeing a couple of folk.

It's been a week of considerable travel for a guy like me who rarely leaves his locality. Crieff and Glasgow on Monday, and off again today.

But it's really just indicative of the extent to which both I myself, and the church of which I'm a part (I mean the local congregation), are bound to the wider church.

On Sunday night coming I'll be hoping to show from the Scriptures the marks of a healthy church: and one of those marks (the first, in fact) is the way such congregations are committed to the welfare of the wider church.

That's what this morning reflected. Time being spent with a couple of men who share a similar passion for the cause of Jesus Christ.

There are all sorts of issues with which we're having to deal these days. All sorts of issues confronting the church of Christ in our land. And simply bashing boldly on in each of our small corners is not going to be enough.

Contending for Christ takes place in a broader arena. We're in this together, and it's only as we recognise and give some real expression to that fact, that progress will be made.

That's what this morning was all about. A useful, profitable time. Deep-rooted, genuine fellowship in the gospel. Iron sharpening iron.

That's where I was this morning.

And on the back of that, later on today, there was much for me to write.

There's a larger, and far-flung, constituency, a whole group of folk who are looking for help, looking for guidance, looking for that which will help them with what we all face. I needed to get something written for them.

The cause of Christ's gospel is bigger by far than anything anyone does in their own little corners.

Where were you?

I was out helpng to change the face of Scotland.