life

No two days are ever the same. Except for their being pretty full!

I have the enormous privilege of sharing with folk in the highs and the lows of their lives.

This morning again I had time with Calum; he's shortly to be starting as minister up at Macduff, and this was really his last main chance to touch base with me here before he goes. It's a daunting prospect for any young man - but exciting, too. And there's lots he wants to talk about.

I forget sometimes that I'm actually getting older: and I suppose as well it sometimes doesn't really cross my mind that a younger generation wants to tap in to the reservoir of decades-long experience I've gained.

The time that we have flies by. There's never the time to pursue all we want to be covering. But I share his keen expectancy, and have no doubt that he'll be greatly used by God in following through that calling to Macduff.

There's the lunch-time service next. The last for a while as we take a bit of a break through the next few weeks as the schools move into holiday mode.

Being the last of the 'term', we celebrate the sacrament. The bread and wine are passed along the pews. There are those for whom this is, I think, the first time in long years that they have taken part in this; a tangible way of their welcoming Jesus himself into their hearts and lives.

It's a simple, moving service, centred round the briefest exposition of the Word, remembering that Jesus Christ has brought us near: to God - and also to each other. A communion service.

There's something very fitting in our sitting round the tables in the hall and sharing lunch together once the service in the church is done. A sense of belonging, being bound to each other in Christ.

There are 'lows' in life as well, of course. And through the afternoon I'm spending time with people who have recently been bereaved. Mainly those well up in years, for whom their own impending death must plainly be quite soon. I mean, when you're up in your nineties you know you don't have ages still to go.

We talk about Jesus, and why he's so different from anyone else, and why it's because of all that he's done that we're able to cherish the hope that our death isn't really the end.

One lady hasn't been at worship for long years. She used to be at worship in the dim and distant past: but 'other things' crept in. Things which made it hard for her to share in weekly worship, so the habit of a worship-less observance of a Sunday slowly formed. A very hard habit to kick.

She seems glad to be able to talk about Jesus again. It somehow helps to buttress what small hope she has been fostering in her heart. But there's masses of ground to make up with her. Years and years of the soil of her heart remaining simply fallow and unploughed.

It's best that our hearts are being 'ploughed' and 'harrowed' and sown with the seed of God's Word when we're young. Or at least a good deal younger than ninety!

So I'm meeting with folk in the evening as well and we're working away at the Scriptures. Seeking to learn what they mean. Seeking to see how the Scriptures apply to our lives. Bedding the seed of the Word in the soil of these teachable hearts.

And seeing the growth which then follows is a privilege, joy and delight!