keeping up

Catching up.

I suppose that's what today has been. Again! I sometimes think I'm always catching up. Or trying to, anyway.

Catching up with bank accounts and tax returns and all those sort of things. Things I leave aside, as not being all that pressing right at present.

I will get round to doing them. Another time. Later. And then, before I know it, a week has passed, or maybe more, and one small task has grown to be a mountain of administrative chores.

That sort of catching up.

Catching up with letters that I've been meaning to get written. Letters, notes and cards I really want to write. But I want to give them time. And so I put them off until another day when (whom do I think I'm kidding?!) I will have a bit more time.

That sort of catching up.

Catching up with household chores. Cleaning, sorting, dusting, tidying out. Inside and out. The house and the garden and odds and bods.

The sort of things I figure I could leave for one more day. And the day can soon become a week because the argument can easily be applied on each succeeding day!

That sort of catching up.

And preparation, too. I try to leave most of my Saturdays clear of this that I'm doing through the week. I like to give myself a break from this. At least until Saturday night.

But some weeks that's not possible. And this was one of those.

Partly because, with Tuesday at that conference of ministers, there was one less day to fit things in. And one more thing to prepare, of course!

So I had to do some catching up on that through a part of the morning at least.

Catching up.

Not that I feel that rushed! It's just that there's always more to do.

But maybe that's how the Lord himself must feel. Always more to do.

At least for six days. And then, of course, he rested. Because it was all done. Well, at least for that week anyway!

Maybe it's more just keeping up, instead of vainly catching up. Not trying to do too much each day. But seeing there is a time for everything. And knowing, every day, just what it is I should be doing then.

Pacing myself. Like God. A bit each day. Working and resting. Action, reflection.

Not rushed at all. Just keeping up. With him.

remembrance

There's always an act of remembrance along at the Royal High - the local secondary school.

That's how my day began today. They ask me along to share in the simple ceremony and then to lead the closing prayer.

It's not an easy thing for any school to do these days, I guess. There's such a massive distance now between the pupils growing up and those whom they remember in this way.

A distance in time - and a distance in culture as well.

But the school is steeped in history. And part of that visual history is a large commemorative door and a three-fold set of stained glass, commemorative windows, all down one side of the hall.

The simple act of laying a wreath beside the door and then beside the windows, too, at least provides a striking pause amidst the bustle of our daily lives enabling all to think.

The 'thinking' bit was led by two of the pupils. Their own, heartfelt reflections on the price of war. It was powerful stuff. Well-written, well-read and well-received.

Some of those remembered would be ages with the pupils there today. Their lives so early ended. Before they'd almost started.

It makes you think. About life. How short it always is. How quick it always flies. How soon it's always gone.

Maybe I thought that all the more with my Mum's death still so fresh. And her whole life now gone. And how her older brother had been not long out of school when he had died towards the end of World War II. And how she always missed him more than words could tell.

I think that's part of the silence we observe. There aren't any words to express the horror and pain, the sorrow and grief, the cost and the price that is borne.

It's too easy, I guess, to forget.

Too easy not to think about these things. Too easy to ignore the basic questions as to how we live our lives: and what this life's about: and why there is such conflict and the dreadful sort of carnage that it always leaves behind it in its wake.

I suppose those sort of thoughts kept hanging in the air above my day in all that I was doing after that.

There was preparation to be done for the services coming up. I found that hard.

Struggling, I think, because of the dark and sombre mental clouds 'remembrance' at the Royal High had brought. Sunday's 'Remembrance Sunday' and I never find that easy. So many conflicting perspectives.

Some for whom the pain of their remembrance is still so fresh and so acute. Others who believe this widespread emphasis on those who gave their lives in war is too much of a contrast with the One we seek to follow as the Prince of Peace.

So preparing for this coming Sunday's service wasn't easy. Not at all.

I had a break in the middle of the day to go and meet with others in relation to a venture that's been on the go for two or three years now.

A venture which excites me as I see how it creates a very different context for the followers of Jesus to be his church.

I suppose in some ways it gave me the sort of balance I needed. Remembrance takes me back across the past. This meeting took me forward to the future God is shaping even now.

Maybe that's the key to it. Standing in the present, the act of our 'remembering' inspires us to be bold and full of confidence in God in shaping out, with him, the future of his world.

finding my role

Three separate folk said exactly the same thing to me this evening.

"You've obviously found your role in life at last!"

We were hosting a meeting here of leaders from some of the different churches round about. And I was serving the coffee and tea.

Hardly that demanding. But it clearly came as something of a surprise for some to see me filling such a role. Though why it should be such a big surprise is really quite beyond me. Isn't this the sort of washing-feet equivalent that Jesus taught us all to be committed to?

The same repeated words, though, made me think. About my role in life. Or, broader still, our roles. Do we simply play a role that others make it clear that they expect of us? Or do we find the role that God has made us for?

It's easy as a present-day disciple of the Lord to feel a certain pressure to conform to how the people round about expect us to conduct ourselves. To play a role which others subtly shape. Instead of figuring out just how the Lord himself desires we should be lving out our lives.

Serving others - nothing less than that - that's pretty much the essence of the role we're given by the Lord. That's what Jesus did. That's how he lived. That was pretty much the 'role' that he assumed.

And all he says is simply Follow me! Like, you serve others too.

It isn't all that complicated really! And it covers mostly everything!

Like serving folk with coffee, tea and biscuits.

I'm a servant. That's the 'role' in life I've found. In fact, I've found more than that: I've found that being a servant is life! That's what it is to be truly alive.

Which takes me back to this morning. I was in at the school. No specific reason. Just touching base. Catching up. Being there with the staff at coffee time.

The head was asking which (if any) classes I was with at present. None, I said. So he took a note and said he'd send reminders to his staff again that I was 'at their service'.

Available. Ready to help, whatever their needs might be.

It was one of those days when I was in and out of the school. Back and forth. It's not that far, of course. A quick five minute walk. The exercise is good and there's usually folk I meet en route.

I was back later on for the start of an SU group in the school. For primary 4s and 5s. There were about as many adults there as children - at least to start with. Four primary 4 girls was how it started off (though it later grew to six).

Numbers are not everything. The fact that it started small was nothing like as important as the fact that it's finally started! It was an exciting day. A kind of 'land-mark' day in some respects.

A day of new beginnings. And all such new beginnings ever are is centred in a willingness to serve.

So, yes, I guess, I've found my role in life all right!

wearing the crown

I was back at the school today again. An upper school assembly at the outset of the day.

An assembly with a difference, mind. And, well, yes mind was very much the essence of it all.

It was, in effect, a large scale sort of mind-game more than anything else. A couple of folk from a group called 'Mind Laboratory' (or something like that) who use games to help stretch children's minds. Very educational, I guess.

So they basically just played this game. Two teams - the two of them on the one team, all of the children on the other: a straightforward game with simple rules. And the claim from the two who were teaching the game that they would definitely win.

Which, of course, they did!

So the children wanted to find out how. This was the bit that starts to stretch their minds. And, sure enough, before too long the children had all cracked it.

Now I'll probably get into trouble for letting you in on the 'secret'. But, hey, I'll run that risk! Because it's not so much a secret as just pure old common sense. And there were things about the game which got me thinking on entirely different lines.

So here's the game.

Twelve objects on a line (the last on the line, on the right hand end, is a crown).

Two teams compete and take it in turns to remove, from the left, either one or two of the objects each shot (the team gets to choose whether it's one or two they remove).

The team removing the crown at the end of the line - well, they're the ones who win.

Not that hugely complicated. The children understood it right away.

Okay, said the MindLab folk, being ever so gracious and good: you guys start. What child is going to protest at that? So off the children go and, like I say, the MindLab folk they win the game hands down.

And the next game.

And the next.

And then they relent and start to give clues as to where the 'secret' lies. And soon the children have twigged. And once they've cracked the 'secret' (which is really common sense - that's why they say it's a mind game) then it's they who start to win.

The key (of course) is in the number three. Twelve objects. And three's the crucial number.

Your opponent starts (how very gracious of you!). If he or she decides to take away one object, you choose two. If he or she removes not one but two, you then choose just one.

Make it up to three each shot. Go on like that throughout the game - and two turns down the line you win. Always. Guaranteed.

It got me thinking down another line, as I say. The interplay there is between these numbers, three and twelve, in so much truth.

The twelve sons of Jacob. The twelve tribes of Israel. The twelve friends of Jesus. The twelve hours of daylight. The twelve months of the year.

And then this number three. Three persons in the Godhead. Three crosses on Golgotha. Three days in the darkness of the tomb. Three marks of Christian living (faith and hope and love). Three.

There is, it sometimes seems, a certain sort of mathematic 'magic' which lies at the heart of the world in which we live. Crack the simple 'secret' and you get to win the crown.

It is exactly that in which I'm day by day involved. Except it's not so much a Mind Laboratory as a Soul Laboratory sort of thing I do. Stretching the mind to some extent, but more than that, expanding people's souls.

Helping them see these very simple strategies by which alone we live. Once you see it, it's simple!

There's nothing that hard about living our lives on the back of the 'three' and ending each sequence of twelve daylight hours with the crown of Christ's victory ours.

Every day. Every year. The victory given to us.

At the end I wanted to rush to the front and tell them that I do the same! Except what I'm about is no sort of game. It's life itself I'm about.

I didn't, of course! I didn't want to steal another's thunder.

But I thought it!

And as we were all departing the hall, one of the girls from the P5 class came up and asked if I'd like her to read from the Scriptures again in one of our Sunday services. She was the one that I'd asked before and plainly the girl was just head-over-heels thrilled to bits.

It made me just appreciate the more that what I really long to see, in all of them, these children here in school, I long to see them each and every one discovering for themselves how theirs can be the crown of life, each day, each year, throughout their lives.

I long to see them living by that faith and hope and love. I long to see them coming to a knowledge of almighty God, the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. I long to see them rooting all their living in the death and then as well the mighty resurrection of the Lord.

The lunchtime service is something of a contrast to all that, of course. Mainly folk at the other end of life's short spectrum.

But no less a pleasure to see them all out and to share in this time of worship again. I really do enjoy these times. And I think I'm not alone!

A chance to praise the Lord, to hear his word and stretch our minds, to meet with friends and have some food: I mean, that's got to be good! It's a brilliant sort of 'staging post' in the middle of the week.

Most of the folk who come, I say, are getting on in years. A contrast to the children I was seeing early on.

So it seemed there was a certain apt completeness to my day when evening saw me spending time again with a couple in the middle years of life. The young and the old and then the middle-aged.

A couple exploring the faith. Eager to know the Lord.

The stage between the open, warm naivety of children in the school and the settled, clear convictions of the older folk at lunch. Out on the seas of adventure and learning to live Christ's life.

Three separate groups of people. Three different stages of growth. And I love being with them all.

Three. And I'm wanting them all to be learning to wear the crown!

changing seasons

It's not often I'm asked to speak to other ministers.

I'm actually quite glad about that. Mainly because I don't really feel I have that much to say. Well, not that much that they don't already know.

But I had the chance today. A fairly small group (less than 10), most of whom I think were in their first five years of ministry. Everything in front of them.

I suppose that's why I'd got the invitation - as someone who's now got a fair old bit behind him! My one main big credential is maybe this: I'm a survivor. Still there. And still enjoying the challenge.

The topic I'd been given was entitled - Cultivating change in the church.

I said my role model was basically Abraham. He went out, the Scriptures say, not knowing where he was going. I feel that's a pretty good description of where I'm mostly at. And probably a lousy credential for speaking to folk like these!

But it's true. I don't know where I'm going. Only that I'm wanting to follow the Lord. And he (thankfully) does know where he's going.

I don't do blueprints. Mainly because I don't have any.

So all I did was try and tell them all what happens when you go out in that way, not knowing where you're going. Well, not what happens. More what's happened here with with me. So far.

I've tried to stand a little back, reflect upon it all and see the sort of pattern that there's been to what the Lord's been doing all these years. He's the one that changes things. That's the only way it happens.

He makes things grow. That's what one of the early followers of Jesus once wrote. And I believe it absolutely. Only God makes things grow.

But there is a certain pattern and I find it quite exciting when I see the way he works the whole thing forward bit by bit.

I'm struck, for instance, by the way that, donkeys years ago, Moses said at the end of his lengthy sermon that it should be repeated every seven years.

I mean, it was a good sermon and all. It must have been powerful stuff to listen to the first time round. But repeat it every seven years? The guy must have thought it was good!

But then I got to thinking that maybe there's a sort of 'cycle' in a congregation's life which means you come back round and kind of start it all again each seven years or so. With a 'new' congregation. Seven years on. Seven years older. Seven years more mature.

A congregation that's been slowly shaped and changed by that sustained exposure to God's truth for seven solid years.

And it seemed to me that that's what's happened here. Which means I'm almost through my third new congregation in this place!

I don't know if they found the time that helpful. I hope so, of course, but it's not always easy to say. It seemed a bit like simply stating the obvious.

But at least the very challenge of reflecting on the changes there have been ensured it was of help to me, if no one else! Even if I'm no further on in terms of knowing where I'm going.

I don't expect to know, though. That's the point. The essence of the calling that we have entails our always going out not knowing where we're going.

Always.

I read a book the other day which prompted me to think along those lines again. Through Painted Deserts, by Donald Miller. The story of a trip he took from Texas, long ago. Just going out, leaving: and not really knowing where exactly he was going.

And this is what he says at the start - "The seasons remind me that I must keep changing, and I want to change because it is God's way. ... I want to repeat one word for you: Leave"

I wonder if I'm changing seasons now myself. From summer into autumn. The leaves as rich in colour as they'll ever be, but soon they'll all be falling.

It was down to earth with a bump at night, anyway! A meeting of 'the Presbytery'. A stack of fellow ministers and elders from across the town. It's duty alone which sees me there. I wonder if the matters being discussed required we all be there. I mean, over a hundred folk.

I sometimes think that life's too short to use so many 'people hours' like that.

off-road

Sometimes coming back after a week away it's a case of having to hit the ground running.

Today, the way I've been feeling, it was an effort simply to hit the ground! But it's always good to be back.

There wasn't a lot of running, though! It was pretty slow and laboured.

The way my old Hornby Dublo railway set used to be (and still is, I think). When I hadn't run the engines for a while, they had to be teased and cajoled back into their normal running mode. They'd go a bit, then stop a bit and then I'd need to reach across and give the thing a push and get it on the go again.

I don't suppose they make them quite like that these days. But I felt a bit like that. A Hornby Dublo engine being set to work again. Stiff and slow and cold. With sudden bursts of energy. And then relapse. And gently bit by bit being teased and eased along the track by God himself.

Trackside always. Which is just as well.

I was thinking a bit about the whole analogy, I have to say. My being like an old Hornby Dublo train set. Or even a new one, I suppose.

The whole business of staying on the right tracks. And round and round the same old boring circuit all the time. Is that what living life and following Christ and serving God is really meant to be?

For sometimes that's exactly what it feels like we have made it be. An endless round. Safe (in the main - if you went too fast the engines could come off the track). Routine. Predictable.

Hardly what I see in Jesus Christ. The One we aim to follow.

My heart lit up the other day on hearing that the sort of new Scalextric sets they make allow you now to deviate from off your own set track. It's all now digitally done. And you can move from lane to lane. No longer just set tracks (or 'ruts'!) in which you're stuck.

That sounds a little better and I fancied that. But even that's a far old cry from how it's meant to be. Jesus was an 'off-road' sort of guy who didn't stick to all the tar-macadam roads of our traditions one small bit.

And certainly didn't just go round and round the same old boring circuit every week.

Not that I'm saying I do. It's just that it sometimes feels like that! And today I probably needed that. Just to get me going once again. Preparing orders of service. Choosing hymns. That sort of thing.

There was a meeting as well at night. I sometimes think it's one long round of meetings, too. Part of the 'Hornby Dublo' circuit that we chunter round.

But the meeting was good. A chance to talk, to toss things round and sort things through and hopefully get things clear.

We were talking about leadership. About how we change the structures to create the sort of leadership we seek.

I've thought for a while that part of the basic problem that we have is simply this. We're trying to fit a 'bottom-up' style of ministry into a 'top-down' view of leadership.

The problem that we have, I think, is simply with the sort of working picture that we have of 'leadership'. We think of it too much, I fear, in terms of pure 'control'. The guys who hold the reins. Power.

It's crossed my mind for long enough that that's just not the way that Jesus sees or does it. Not at all.

I think we have to re-think, right from scratch, exactly what we mean and understand by leadership. In other words, it's not just the structures we have to address. It is in fact the meaning of the thing. The model, or picture, from which we start.

It's really quite radical! Off-road living.

contemplating retirement

It's interesting what happens when you retire.

Not that I've tried it, of course. Not yet! But it's often the case that when people retire, they actually don't last long.

Well, maybe not often. But sufficiently often to make you think there's something going on. Like it's dangerous to stop working.

Not that I'm being morbid, or anything. It just crossed my mind again today that ever since I started on this little week-long holiday I've not felt well at all! As if the bugs can only catch you up when you yourself slow down.

It's hardly scientific. But that's what it feels like. And today was the worst!

I didn't really venture out at all and spent the day immersed in making DVDs. Well, one in fact. And even that was far from being completed in a day!

But it took my mind off feeling none too great and there is a certain therapy in .. well, work, of a sort, I guess. Although I see it as a 'hobby' and I love the different challenges involved.

It crossed my mind that we were made to work. And when the work's not there we're bound to start to suffer.

The DVD today revolved around the words of one of the psalms. It's a great way to study the psalm, I'm bound to say. To set the words of the psalm against a series of pieces of music and weave through all of that a seamless flow of images - it certainly helps ingrain the psalmist's words into my soul.

And there's a certain healing therapy in that. I felt the better for applying myself like that.

And even less inclined to seek an early retirement!