fun

Well, my day was full of people again.

Which is good. The way it should be.

Jesus was always with people.

Sure, he took time to be on his own. Mostly it ended up being at some pretty unearthly time of the day or night, when no one else was really that up to being around.

I guess if I was an author I'd maybe see things differently. I'd have a little sign up on the door that said - Do not disturb. Please.

And people would understand. At least, I hope they would.

They'd know I was hard at work and needed to be left on my own to do this job, this very important job of writing this book.

And maybe it would be a good book. A great book, maybe. A book, perhaps, that somehow changed the world.

They'd see how very important it always had been to have that sign outside my room saying Please do not disturb.

Such a wonderful book was the fruit of that leaving the guy alone.

But I'm not an author. That isn't my job. It's not what my life's about.

Even if I might sometimes like to entertain the notion that it was.

People are not an interruption to the life I'm called to live. They are that life.

And I figure that God knows what he's doing when these many different people cross my path: and that he'll let me know himself what to say when the moment comes to speak.

Like a Sunday. If I haven't had the time to prepare too well. Because of all the people there have been.

It's different, of course, if I've nothing to say because I've just been loafing around.

Time with people comes in all sorts of different forms.

Sometimes it comes through e-mails, sometimes through telephone calls.

Most of the time, though, it's face to face, person to person.

The way I think it's meant to be.

I was round at the school again today. A couple of times.

The first time was late morning. Just before the school was closing up for the week (they have a half day on a Friday).

I'd said to the Primary 6s yesterday that I'd bring them all a booklet which would cover all I'd talked about with them when I'd been in with them. So I took that round.

They were in the middle of a German class when I put my head around the door.

The funniest sort of German class I'd ever seen, I have to say. Though that's not saying much since I've never taken a German class in my life.

They were playing a game. School has changed a lot since I was at that age.

I don't think we ever played games like that in class. Well, maybe we sometimes did in a sort of way. One of our teachers worked like that. His classes were fun.

It's a good way to learn. Because children like to play.

In fact I think adults like to play as well. Except they don't let on, because they think that everyone else will think them very childish. And ... well, they don;t want that.

But I think it's true. We like to play. I think that's the way that we're made. I think that's how God is himself. I think he likes to play.

So I stayed while they played the game. And I guess I learned some German, too.

And I'm hoping they're learning that life the way that Jesus lived it out, that's fun as well.

Like the game they were playing, you have to stay alert and use your head and think about what's going on.

But it's fun. It's there to be enjoyed.

Using my head and staying alert and thinking about what's going on. All of that has been part of my day. But there's fun with it, too.

I was in at the school later on. They had their Christmas Fayre today. Late afternoon.

So I went along for that. The place was mobbed! It was great. Young and old and everything in between.

I met so many different folk. Stopping and chatting and catching up. It was great.

I think the children love it too. When they see that I care. That I make the effort to come to the things that they put on.

(Not that this was the children's doing, this Christmas Fayre. This was the PTA. I think. I didn;t actually ask!)

Going along to a thing like that is probably not in the same sort of league at all as some of the other important things that loads of people do.

Like writing books. Or writing up new legislation for the country to obey. All sorts of things like that.

But I figure it's what the Lord himself is eager that I do.

Just be there.

That's all you have to do. Be there. And enjoy the being there. Enjoy the meeting people. Enjoy the chance to chat. Enjoy the fun. Enjoy the bits of laughter you create.

I think that's what he says.

There's a woman, for instance, who stands outside the local shop each day.

She's from Romania and she's selling, every day, her copies of The Big Issue.

Now, it's not a new issue each day she has, of course. Which makes it a little bit awkward when I pass her nearly every day.

So I stop and chat and I've got to know her just a little bit these past few months.

Her English isn't all that good. And I don't speak Romanian, any more than I speak much German.

I'm not a brilliant linguist, as you can see.

But you can still have fun with German, though you don't really know the language. As I discovered again today.

And this lady and I, we can still have fun. Despite the language barrier.

Because the language God gives us to speak doesn't work through the medium of words.

Which sounds pretty trite. But it's true.

People are people, whatever the language they speak.

And whatever the language they speak, they're looking, I think, for love.

For love, and a life that is full to the brim with fun.

They don't want to work, I think, so much as simply to play.

people

Slowly, I'm getting used to Thursdays.

Although today had a bit of a variation from the normal rush.

It's basically a 'school' day, seeing me in at the school as much as four separate times. Which means a good bit of walking back and forth.

Not that it's far - a five minute walk at most I'd have thought. Nor that I mind the walking.

It's just that it all takes time. Four times back and forward in a day can be as much as a further 40 minutes removed from the day.

Though there's always the chance to think. And there's always the chance I'll meet some folk as well.

Which is what happened when I went up town. I was pushed for time (in amongst the dotting to and fro between the school) so I took the bus.

And of all the people I met on the bus it was, I guess, the person I'd have most have wished to spend some 20 minutes 'catching up' with just at this time.

A conversation that I needed to have. And a 41 bus was maybe the only way I'd get to have it.

It didn't feel at all like time being wasted.

Nor did the meeting I had up town. Despite it being rather longer than I'd anticipated it would be. A good hour and a half. But that was because of the care that the person took to address the many details that are causing some concern.

And the journey back? Well, the upper floor of the 41 again, my favourite seat, right at the front of the bus. And company again.

There's a bus stop right beside the school, so I jumped off there, already a wee bit late for the SU group which meets there on a Thursday.

Though I'd tried to get a message to the guy who leads it with me that I might be somewhat late. I got the end, at any rate. 'H and G' sort of stuff. ("Hi and goodbye" for those who haven't ever watched the film, 'Sleepless in Seattle').

Just at the moment, once the SU group, and the lunches for the upper school, are done, it's straight on in to the Primary 6s for a four-part look at Jesus.

As I said last week, they're a wonderful year, and it's always a pleasure to have that time with them. Today it was on the life of Jesus. The range of different people that were really what his life was centred round.

People matter. That's what I wanted the children to see.

They matter. The children. They matter to God. And maybe the only way they'll get to see and understand that truth is if they see they matter, too, to me.

So I try and help them see that. Which isn't really all that hard. Since I'm a child myself and I love being there in the class with them, having a bit of fun.

They've got their Christmas Fayre tomorrow afternoon. So I'll try and get along for that as well.

Who knows just whom I'll see and meet in wandering round the stalls?!

People, anyway.

In the end of the day they're what really matter.

leadership

Leadership was my theme at the lunchtime service today.

Over the weeks at these services we've been looking at the story of Joseph (the multi-coloured-coat one, rather than the one who features on Christmas cards).

He was a leader. Plainly so. He knew from quite an early age, his awkward teenage years, that this was what his destiny under God would be.

Which made him a pain in the neck to start with. Too full of himself.

We got to the bit today where he ends up in prison in Egypt. Falsely accused of raping his master's wife.

It can't have been that much fun. Not where he'd really have chosen to serve his God and exercise the leadership to which he had been called.

But most of the time we none of us get that choice. As in where God calls us to serve.

It didn't seem to matter, though, just where you placed this guy. He ended up a leader.

Even in prison. Which was a sort of 'training ground' for leadership he'd exercise on a hugely larger canvas in the days to come.

He gets to take care of the other prisoners there. And he gets to take charge of the work of the prison, too. Pretty much like an elder in the church.

Which some people possibly think is a bit like being in a prison itself.

Wherever you placed this young Hebrew man, he showed he was a leader.

Not because he went out of his way to claim that sort of position for himself. But just because ... well, just because he was a leader. It was in his DNA sort of thing.

The sort of leadership qualities Joseph displayed, even there in prison, are the sort of leadership qualities always required.

The calling from God, for starters. Then service and patience and insight and wisdom. And doubtless a whole load more.

It's that sort of package I'm conscious of needing myself. Pretty much every day.

Today's been mainly a 'leadership' day. A day when a whole load of issues to do with our leading the people of God have been to the fore.

The warden put Joseph in charge of all those held in the prison and he was made responsible for all that was done there (Gen.39.22).

That sometimes gets more than a little complex. All sorts of different problems to address.

There's the need for a lot of insight. And the need for a weight of wisdom.

A lot of situations which, if packaged up for posting, would be labelled simply 'Handle with care'.

As in a lot of care.

Most of the day I've been meeting with folk in connection with just such things. It takes up time. And not a little thought.

But the bottom line with Joseph was that, as 'a child' of Abraham (well, great-grand-child in point of fact - but the guy was descended from Abraham, that's the point), he was a man through whome the nations of the world would come to know God's blessing.

He was good to be around. He brought blessing wherever he went.

And that's how I have to see all the time and thought that's taken up in tackling all the issues that there are.

God's blessing is what's at stake.

The investment of time and energy down these lines is rightly made.

a foreign land

There was a meeting in town I attended tonight.

Leaders from the various different Church of Scotland congregations through the city. It was long again, as it sometimes is.

But two folk were leaving and there's always some time taken up with goodbyes. One stepping down on account of ill-health. The other on account of his age.

The latter was full of wise quotes in his 'farewell speech'. Including this - "the past is a foreign country..."

Which he probably didn't realise is (pretty nearly) the (English) title of a new movie drama from Italy.

He was quoting, I think, the author of "The Go Between", Leslie P Hartley. Because the quote goes on, "... they do things differently there." Or something like that.

He recognised how much the world had changed in the course of these last fifteen years. How differently things were done in the world back then.

And he recognised as well how much we all must therefore change as well.

He spoke of the way he saw his generation as perhaps having played a 'holding' role. Keeping alive the 'rumour of God', to enable the next generation to build on that and bring to pass the sort of church God longs that we should be.

It struck a chord with me, I have to say.

Partly because in preparing for Sunday coming, as I had been through today, I'd been thinking about the guy who followed Moses. Joshua.

How he led the people right on in to the so-called 'promised land'. A whole new world from all they hitherto had known.

I was giving some thought to that today in the course of preparation.

Which is what the day has mainly been for me. Preparation.

The morning and evevning services this coming Sunday.

The services coming up beyond this week, right on beyond the 'Christmas rush' to the end of the month and beyond.

The service there'll be tomorrow over lunch.

The Christmas card we'll shortly be sending out to every home in the community. Once we get it printed off!

And a second piece for the next 'Big Picture', the magazine we produce with a view to giving the readers a 'snapshot' of our congregation's life.

Mainly preparation, as I say. Juggling between these various different things to be prepared.

And seeing folk in between.

Some days it feels like I've not got much done, there are so many different 'bits' to the day.

But I noticed as well that Joshua even had some days like that.

Three days he gave the people to get themselves ready. For crossing the river and marching on into the future.

God's future.

Because the past is a foreign land. And the future is the promised land.

the German Market

Yesterday was St Andrew's Day.

A day of celebration. And therefore a public holiday.

But since it was a holiday anyway, the people who take to do with these things made today the public holiday instead.

I did wonder why there were quite so many people out wandering the streets and touring round the German Market which there always is at Christmas time up town.

But after I'd bumped into a number of different folk up there, sometimes literally, sometimes in the metaphorical sense, it dawned on me just why it was they weren't at work.

There were loads of folk all milling around. And there's something strangely appropriate about the whole scenario.

The fresh and freezing air (it was bitterly cold again, really raw). The wooden huts from which the goods are sold. The huge array of colours. The multitude of people. The wonderful mix of smells (warm, mulled wine: all the German suasages: hot soup: and who knows just what else).

Evocative. That's the word, I suppose.

Something which stirs all sorts of emotions and memories deep within our spirits. Evoking the sense of the wonder and goodness of Christmas.

And it's all at the level of experience.

It was really very striking for a guy like me to catch this glimpse again of how communication works. All five senses were clearly and fully involved.

There was music being played. Music evoking memories of childhood days, music recalling so many different Christmases now past. Music which somehow breathes a sense of hopefulness.

There were the smells as well. Warms smells, homely smells. 'Christmas' smells. The smell of the warm mulled wine. The smell of the food being cooked. The smell of the fires being burned. The smell of the wood of the trees.

There were, as I say, all sorts of colours as well. All sorts of colourful clothes that the crowd of people had on. The colours in all of the stands. The colour of blue in the sky, with the low winter sun a yellowy orange and casting those shadows all over the place.

The feel of the cold as hands were exposed to the rawness of freezing air. The feel of the warmth as cups of hot soup were being held. The feel of the wood in the stands that the vendors use.

The taste of the wine, the taste of the soup, the taste of the meat being served. (Not that I had all these, I hastetn to add! I was just observing, I promise)

I was glad that I'd happened to chance on the market today. I hadn't been planning on going at all.

But I found it very instructive. How evocative the whole thing was. And how these very different senses were together being invoked.

It made me realise again how very, very narrow is the line the church has often had on how best to communicate the message that we have.

Most of the time it's really almost wholly 'cerebral'.

Heavily intellectual, geared to the head, and relying on reason. Words. And reasoned argument.

When by and large that isn't really how communication works.

Most communication is 'relational' at heart. It takes place in the context of relationship. If we want to get our message across, we have to foster relationships. No two ways about it.

And most communication is 'experiential' too. The sort of thing I saw first hand today. Powerfully evocative. Touching the spirit by engaging those five main senses that we have.

It's one of the biggest shifts that there has to be in how our life and worship is expressed.

And it goes against the grain of maybe four or five whole centuries of practice which has focussed on the 'cerebral', engaging people's minds.

That's not really how communication works. Not at all.

A trip to the German Market would make that pretty clear to anyone.

privilege, not pressure

Friday already.

Most working folk tend to think more in terms of it being Friday at last. The weekend approaching, time off work. Great.

But Fridays don't do that for me.

I'm thinking, it's Friday already, and Sunday's coming fast. Where on earth has the week all gone?

I've been seeing that many folk this week, and doing so many things, that there's not been much time for preparing the message the Lord wants to bring on Sunday.

So today's been largely set aside for that.

No one around. In the main. Which means there's time and space - quiet and uninterrupted time - to listen to the Lord.

You can't really do that at speed. And you can't really do that too well when there's loads of different people all around.

And the people here - myself included - we're always really eager to be hearing what the Lord is saying to us. They come expectant, every Sunday service.

Expecting God to speak.

No pressure!

Well, not really. I can't make God speak myself. But I can get in the way of him speaking, I guess. By not listening well enough myself.

So that's what today's been about. Listening hard and long to hear the voice of God.

Pressure?

No, not pressure, but privilege.

a wide door

There's only so much you can do in a day.

Which means there are always choices to be made. I simply can't do everything I'd like to do - or all the things that other folk might think that I should do.

We all only get the 24 hours a day. And some of them go on sleep. (Albeit not enough!)

A year and a half ago I got the sense that the Lord really wanted to ratchet up a bit my time in the local school. That that should be a real priority.

So the likes of today there've been four different sets of involvement along at the school. Which occupied all of my time 'til mid-afternoon.

The assembly as usual to start with. P4-7. The theme, or the value for the month - imagination.

The head was sharing the dreams that he has for the school. It was good and riveting stuff. Not quite in the MLK, I-have-a-dream sort of league, but not far off.

It's good to share our dreams. And it made me ask myself if I could put in words the dreams I have myself. The dreams that God has given me.

For my life. For the work I'm called to do. For the chance that I have to be in at the school like this.

Well, that was the assembly. And right after that I had a meeting here to prepare for a morning we're going to be having with the children of Primary 7.

In about a couple of weeks.

It's a 90 minute session where the children will come to our halls. And we'll have the chance to lead them through an inter-active programme which will help them all appreciate what Christmas is about.

It's a programme prepared by Scripture Union and one of their es-team (Edinburgh Schools Team) workers was along to lead us through it all.

When I say 'us', there'll be about seven of us here who'll share in leading the morning. There are 77 children in all (I think) in the Primary 7 classes, so we need that amount of leaders. All of them really great with children.

It's a great opportunity - and it's wonderful that the school is more than happy for this sort of thing to be done. I guess it helps the teachers too. At that time of year not least.

And then after that there was the SU group along at the school again.

We started with them on Christmas today. We don't get long each Thursday. Half an hour at most.

So we figured we'd need a good few weeks to run over the Christmas story and we'd need to be starting today.

They're a good bunch of children and always so full of enthusiasm. It's great to see!

From there it was straight on into the first of a series of four different sessions I'll have with the Primary 6s. Working through with them, as part of the given curriculum, the life of Jesus.

I'd done it last year with the Primary 6s, and they wanted me back.

The Primary 6s are last year's Primary 5, of course. So I know them well, as I'd had the chance to work through with them all last year a 5-part course on Christianity.

They're a terrific year. Really lovely children. Well behaved, courteous, interested, keen. It's a pleasure to teach them all.

So today was the first of the four with them. On the birth of Jesus. Appropriately enough, with Christmas now looming large.

It's really most exciting having the chance to work through with them all just who this person was and is and why it is he's really revolutionised so many people's lives.

I have my dreams for what these times will lead to in their lives as well!

But all of that meant it was really 3pm before I was back and ready for anything else. One and a half parts of a three-part day were centred on the school.

That's what I mean by the choices I have to make. That's one and a half parts of a day when I might have been doing other things. Because there are loads of things to be done.

One of the early followers of Jesus once wrote that "a wide door for effective service has opened for me": and that's pretty much what it feels like for me with the school.

When you find a door being opened wide, I work on the basis you walk. You seize that opportunity and walk on in.

Because I guess the Lord himself has his dreams for all that may be accomplished by my walking right on in and being there at the school.