walking with God

The schools are on a well-earned holiday this week. So there've not been the trips to the school today as there generally are on a Thursday.

Which is just as well in many ways, there's been so much else to attend to!

There've been a number of e-mails requiring attention on a range of different subjects. The responses take time, and the e-mails I send in return are hardly short.

There are three worship services, rather than the usual two, this coming Sunday, since it's one of our 'communion' days. That, too, means some extra preparation.

In fact, there's a good deal more by way of preparation required this week, since as well as the three Sunday services, there's a service of thanksgiving I've still to prepare for this Saturday lunch-time; and I'm also leading the young people's meeting on the Sunday night.

Oh - and I'm hoping to look in on the concert being given here on Saturday night by the African Children's Choir! And I'm meant to be leading a prayer, I believe, at some point through the concert.

There are people to see as well, of course. Bereaved families, folk newly back from hospital, folk who've a family member still in hospital, a couple who don't get out that much, and for whom this is the first anniversary of a loved one's death last year, and a home where the girl has just been filmed for this year's Children in Need.

Ministry is always very varied! No two days are the same.

Ministry is also very privileged - I get to share with so many folk at some special times in their lives.

And ministry is generally very pressurised as well. There's a mountain of things to be done, and you can't do them all, so there are choices I'm having to make each day as to how my time is spent.

Not least because I have to factor in to all the different tasks I want to do the time and space to get alone with God: to hear his voice: to catch his take upon it all: to see what he is doing in it all.

I have, that is, to be sure that I'm keeping in step with the Spirit.

That I'm walking (not running!) with my God.