hotting up

This week is always a full and busy one. Always. This year is no exception.

I'm in at 7 to start my day. And by 8 I've started on the soups there'll be today. The oven's on, the rings are hot. And if you can't stand the heat then you shouldn't be there in the kitchen.

Our Reception Area will be closed for the regular teas and coffees and lunches through the coming month and a bit - so this is the last week that they're on for a while. We want to ensure that we end in style and aren't going out with a whimper. There are a couple of soups again to be made - but once they're up and running, of course, they pretty much cook themselves!

I've a man to meet mid morning. He's the pastor of a nearby congregation who use our premises a lot. They don't have their own facilities (they meet in a school on Sundays), so they're glad to have this close association with ourselves. They share the same passion to let people know about Jesus. We're in this work together.

He and his folk are quite involved in a thing called Healing on the streets. And some of our people have got involved in this sort of ministry, too. He's here this morning to see if there might be mileage in encouraging more to be getting involved.

I tell him (mainly, but maybe not quite entirely, in jest) that the way things are presently going, we may all be out on the streets anyway, so the sooner we learn how to minister there the better!

It's a powerful sphere of ministry, this Healing on the streets: a whole load of churches, up and down the country, are more and more involved in it. And the Lord is working through it.

He's barely away before I'm getting things ready for another lunch-time get-together of pastors and leaders from right across the city. The need to be meeting together is hugely important. When brothers dwell together in unity .. there the blessing falls: life.

I've been trying to ensure we get into the way of meeting and talking and praying like this on a thoroughly regular basis. The days in which we live are marked by growing urgency. There's a darkness falling across the land. A moral and spiritual darkness. And we're getting together to cry to the Lord - shine, Jesus, shine!

There's a letter I have to write, as well. 'Fire-fighting' stuff. The land is becoming a bit of a spiritual desert. There's not been much in the way of the 'rain' of the Spirit of God (and little if any acknowledgement of the reign of the Son of God).

The land and the landscape is parched, dry, barren. These 'fires' can easily break out.

There have been a few of them in recent days. Accidental fires, in contexts where no harm has been intended, erupting out of the frazzled ground of faithlessness on which we presently find ourselves.

I'll be trying to see the person involved, but a letter will help as well. Getting things down in black and white. Making things clear, correcting some misunderstandings I'm sensing have lain at the heart of it all.

Letters like that take some time. I can make things worse and aggravate the fires if I get it wrong.

And then I'm off to call on some folk whom I really must try and see.

I'm back to the house and then out again by 6pm. It's the Primary 7's Leavers' Dance and I've said I'll go along. At least to be there at the start.

The children are hardly recognisable, dressed in all their finery (and arriving as well, as they all seem to do these days, by limousine). In one fell swoop they've shifted out of childhood into an embryonic adulthood. It's frightening how quickly they've all grown up.

A lot of the Mums are barely recognisable also. In their case it's because of the way their mascara's been spread by the flow of their tears. It's a weepy sort of occasion. A rite of passage. And I'm glad to be there to be part of it all once again. Occasions like this are special.

That's one of the countless privileges I always have. I get to share in the special occasions in all sorts of people's lives. It's striking to find that the first of the miracles Jesus performed was, yes, at a special occasion. A wedding.

I work on the basis that he's glad to pitch up to occasions like this tonight. He maybe stays longer than I do, though. I've a meeting I need to attend.

A long meeting, which goes on until after 9pm.

I'm quick to leave at its close as I want to call by and see the person to whom I wrote the letter before it's getting too late.

When I arrive I begin to see that maybe the Lord prolonged the meeting to delay my time of arrival. My ring of the bell is timely, I think. Circumstances are such that it works out well it's later rather than sooner that I've managed along. The Lord, the great fire-fighter, is already at work.

Prevention is better than cure, of course. And our greatest need in this land today is for 'rain' from on high, a fresh and large outpouring from the heavens of the mighty Spirit of God. Drenching the land once again. Bathing the land in the grace of the gospel of Christ.

Things are certainly hotting up!