people-time

Some days are fairly non-stop.

Happily so, I have to say. I enjoy the huge variety and I revel in being on the go.

But hardly a moment to pause, take stock and stand back from it all.

Today was a day like that.

A series of different meetings. Except I don't really like to call them that at all.

It's strange that we do. Call them 'meetings'. The word makes them seem so impersonal. Maybe that's why I'm not a 'meeting' person.

Why are they called 'meetings'? I guess because they're times set aside for meeting other people. So why not call them 'people times' instead? So that I could explain, "I've got a people-time at 7.3pm". Instead of saying, I've a(nother) meeting.

My day's been full of people. And I like it that way.

Virtually all of the morning (after I'd made the soups of course!), was spent with the guy who's creating a whole new database for us. A lot of time. But valuable, too. Working through just how the thing will work and how he'll be able to tailor it all to our needs.

It's a sort of 'shepherding' type of thing. A shepherd needs good admin if he's ever going to notice that a sheep of his is lost. He needs to know how many sheep there are if he's going to be able to suss out that one's gone.

The database is that sort of thing. So the meeting was basically 'pastoral' - at least in terms of intent.

At the end of the morning and into lunch I was meeting with someone else. Some of it fairly practical. Some of it bigger and broader by far. Discussing the future. And also just catching up.

People.

There was time with Douglas at lunch as well. Another 'people-time'. Listening, learning, sharing and praying together. Talkng things through. Working things out. Trying to see the hand of the Lord and the ways he's at work in our worlds.

I got in touch with a friend from decades back at school. We were chums back then and in the years that followed schooling we had many times together. Africa, Canada, working up north on the farm that his father ran.

Then over the years we simply got out of touch. He's up north and I'm down here and .. well, our paths just never crossed.

Last night I saw him on the TV news. A brief report and just a tiny snippet of an interview with him (he's a local councillor up north). But I knew it was him right away.

So today I 'googled' the guy and got an address I could contact him through. More time. But more time well spent. People-time again.

And the evening was the same.

I've given up on 'meetings'! The word is just a switch-off, so far as I'm concerned. Mention a 'meeting' - I groan (inwardly). I think I'm going to call them something else.

'People-times' convey a rather different picture!

prepared

As often as not I'm having to think on my feet.

The way things turn out is not quite how they were planned. I wasn't ever in the Scouts, but I think I might have managed fine: at least in terms of outlook and of attitude. Because I do always try to be prepared.

If I'm asked to give a talk, I like to prepare in advance. I think it's the honourable thing to do.

Maybe the trait is something I got from my Dad. He always used to tell us in our growing years - if a job's worth doing, it's worth doing well. And that includes preparing well, I guess.

Well, that's how I see it at any rate. Whatever it is that I'm going to do, I want to respect the task by preparing as well as I can.

But it doesn't always work out quite like that.

The lunch-time meeting of the SU group at school today was a case in point. I'd spoken with the teacher who runs the thing last week: and he told me it was study number 11 - would I do the 'talk'.

So I duly prepared this morning, acquainting myself with all that the study involved. Only to find on arrival, with the children already there, that he'd got it wrong.

Did I say number 11? he asked. I actually meant number 12!

So there I was, well and truly prepared - except, the way it turned out, I was actually totally unprepared! Be prepared ... for anything.

It makes life really varied, that's for sure.

So I had to adjust on the spot. Take a rapid 'speed-read' of study 12. And figure out instantaneously how best I could teach the truth. It worked out fine. We had some fun. And I think they got the message.

The morning was really a time for my getting prepared. The afternoon and evening were the things I was preparing for.

The SU group at lunchtime at the school.

Then straight on to a meeting here relating to a day we're going to hold on the environment. More planning and thinking things through with the team on that: filling in the details bit by bit. Pulling it all together. It should be quite a day. Well, a morninig, at least.

I had to leave the meeting early to get down in time to the local crematorium for the service of thanksgiving I was leading there.

This was the one in respect of the lady from another congregation who had died. Not a lady I'd ever met, so a case of my leading it 'blind'. The 'tribute' was paid by a family friend (who's also a sort of peripatetic parish priest). And I led the rest of the service.

There were loads of folk present. Some of them came and thanked me at the end. They'd found it very helpful and a comfort in their grief. They were grateful for my being so obviously sincere.

By the time I was back from that, the afternoon was gone. And the evening meeting loomed. This time, a meeting with some others here regarding different facets of our worship week by week. A useful time. A chance to stop and talk things through together.

We don't get enough of such chances. Or, more likely, don't make such moments happen often enough.

Sometimes a day is like that. Preparing myself for the action. Then into the action itself. Like an archer, I guess. Taking time to draw his bow right back, to ensure that when the bowstring is released, the arrow flies straight to its target.

Preparation is everything. So they say. It's important to be prepared. For anything!

listening to the Lord

On a Friday there are never so many folk around the place.

Which in some ways is good. It means there's the chance to get on with things in a concentrated way.

I was glad of the 'space' this being-on-my-own afforded me today. There was much that I needed to do.

I wanted to try and get clear in my mind the message God means me to bring. Or messages more like. Sunday morning and night. Two very different 'words'.

It was the evening one I was working on throughout the bulk of the time. Listening in to what the Lord is saying to us here. It's his word, not mine, that I'm seeking to bring. So the heart of my task is this listening to him.

Which takes time. And often a sort of quiet 'isolation'.

How do I know that I'm hearing him? It's hard to put into words. It's kind of like a gnawing sense that this is what he's saying. Like a fire in my heart that won't go out at all.

Over time you start to recognise his 'voice', the fact that he is speaking and the drift of what he says.

Like last night. I hadn't planned on a travelling up to the hospital then. But I found this spreading pressure on my heart to go and see the daughter of the lady who was up there in the hospital.

And calling on her and learning that she was up at the side of her mother's hospital bed, I knew I had to go.

I'd have wished (as I said in yesterday's post) that I might have made it in time and been there before she had died. But I wasn't. I arrived just moments too late.

I called by this afternoon on the daughter (a lady of seventy). She couldn't get over the fact I arrived when I did and was there at that moment of deepest, immediate grief. I'd been, she declared, a 'God-send'. I found that really encouraging.

Her perception, I think, was right. It was a case of being sent by God. I was very aware of that. Hearing his voice, discerning his gentle 'nudges' and just going where he led.

The bottom line in all I do is simply this. God speaks.

That's the basic reality on which my life is built. He speaks: and, as Charles Wesley in his famous hymn once wrote - and listening to his voice, new life the dead receive.

When I stand on a Sunday morning or night and start to preach, I'm seeking to bring God's word. And as I do just that, it is my expectation that things happen.

People who are spiritually dead, emotionally drained, physically spent - they find themselves revived, renewed, transformed.

So I don't like to think of what I'm doing on a day such as this as simply 'crafting sermons'. As if my work was simply a case of constructing a good bit of script. It's not.

I'm seeking to listen to God. To hear his word. To figure it out in such a way that when I start to preach, it's not my words at all. It's God who'll speak.

And when he speaks, things happen.

I can't predict just what. That's part of what makes it always so exciting.

I never can tell just what it is that is taking place in people's lives. I just know something is. Something God himself is doing in their lives.

And Fridays, when I'm on my own, are somehow an important part of all the massive drama of the Sunday when it comes.

Where have I heard all that before?!

building bridges

London is fascinating.

I know that must sound strange from one who finds it hard to cope with the features of London life.

But it is. Fascinating. In all sorts of different ways.

And one of the things I found so very striking about being there were the bridges across the Thames.

It's a city which straddles a river. And these lines of communication are absolutely integral to all its life. The network of constant connections which make for the city's life.

That's been the picture I've had in my mind at point after point through today. The networks we form, the bridges we build, the healthy connections we make.

I was in at the school again today. On Thursdays it's just a fleeting call, at coffee time. And I never know what to expect. But it's basically 'network' stuff.

And I got the chance to speak to a couple of folk about the day we're hoping to hold in June to think through some environmental issues in our lives.

I met and chatted briefly with the teacher who's in charge of the school's "eco-committee", giving the briefest sort of outline of the sort of thing we planned.

I ran some ideas past Dave, the Head, and he seemed happy with these.

I asked for the chance to speak to the pupils about it all, since we want to involve them too. Run a competition for them all, get them doing some thinking on this theme. Again, he was happy to give me the chance. And this coming Wednesday morning looks to be ideal, since he's already arranged for some guy with an environmental slant to come and speak to the children.

It felt like a fruitful fifteen minute stint. Bridges into the life of the whole community again.

There was time today as well to do the rather different 'building bridges' which is what my 'preparation' tends to be about. Bridges across the flowing waters of time and place and culture to connect the world of the Bible with the world we live in today.

A 'network' of a rather different sort. Connecting a people with God. I felt I made progress with that as well.

And then there was the family who'd been bereaved. The ones who'd asked if I would lead the service of thanksgiving for their loved one who had died.

I went to see them as arranged. But there was no one at the house!

They'd forgotten they'd agreed to meet me then and there! Mobile phones have their uses, for sure. I was able to find them and meet with them both (the son and his daughter) and talk through the sorrow they've known.

A lot of the time it's simply a case of my listening in as they speak. Making connections. Getting a feel for where they're all at and why they feel as they do.

I learned from them why they don't want the other minister. Their side of the story, anyway. Which underlined once again how fragile relationships are. How easily bridges get burned.

And it struck me again how important it is, if you live in a city like London, to guard and protect all those bridges there are. How important it is in community life to be careful to safeguard our ties.

But that, I guess, is history, so far as they're concerned. This family's moving on. And the bridges that I'm seeking to be building in their lives are bridges which will re-inforce connections with the Lord.

I prayed with them both at the end of the time. I usually do. That sort of 'formally' opens the bridge and helps them travel across. I think they found it helpful and encouraging to share in such a prayer.

Death is often likened to a river that we have to cross.

I was thinkng of that as well today. Not just in the light of my seeing these folk this afternoon. But at night as well.

I'd called at the home of a lady here, knowing her mother was ill. The lady was out at the hospital, her mother herself more than merely ill, but very much on her death-bed now. her daughter at her side.

It was straight on up to the hospital the other side of town. The elderly mother had literally moments before passed on when I got there. I'd have wished to have made it in time. But at least I was there at that moment of rawest grief.

And, again, it's a case, at moments like that, of building connections with God. The lady who'd died was a lovely believer in Christ. Now very much, and really very evidently too, at peace. Her family, too, will know a peace as they 'network' now with the Lord. Across those fragile bridges of relationship with God.

But there is that river to cross. Death.

People sometimes put off giving any thought to that. I'll cross that bridge when I come to it, is the line that they often take.

But what if they find when they reach that point that there isn't a bridge in place. Not there, where their whole way of living has brought them to.

You need to know where the bridges are. And here, at the point of our certain death, here there's only one. One man whose life and death have built for all a bridge.

And I found it really striking that the new 'Millennium' Bridge (the 'wobbly bridge' as they call the thing, I think) - that bridge leads right on up to the soaring, grand cathedral of St Paul's.

You walk across this bridge and it takes you through the clamours of a city's busy life, it takes you into the overwhelming grandeur of the presence of almighty God.

A lesson on life? I made the connection.

being creative

Most of the time I really enjoy my work.

That's worth saying, I guess, since for many folk that's not the case at all. (I mean, what sort of life does a Sky News reporter really have??) And I'm daily very grateful that I've got some work to do and that it's work I find fulfilling and enjoyable.

I think it's the inherent creativity which makes my work so satisfying. Not in a strictly 'artistic' sense - as in painting pictures all day long. But in the sense that I am essentially required to be creative all day long. In countless different ways.

Like at the school this morning. Assembly time. Where I don't have anything formal to do as such. Mainly a case of my being there. Sitting in and listening well to all that's going on.

And finding the ways to make the most of all the little chances that there are to be creative. Gentlemanly courtesies (no, not the sort of courtesying ladies do, but minding my ps and qs). Moments of conversation. Smiles to brighten up the day.

It's not that I get nothing at all to do, of course. I help give out certificates - so there's a chance to be creative in the way I'm doing that. I'm asked to lead the children in a prayer - and again there's scope for creativity in that.

I like being along at the school, I have to say. Building on relationships. Sharing in their lives.

A rather different sort of creativity's involved in what I found myself engaged in for the rest of the morning today. Seeing some folk in relation to needs or concerns that they have.

Some fairly major issues here. And a large part of what I am called by the Lord to do is simply listen hard and long. Listen to them and listen to him. To find the way forward and figure out how best they can be helped.

I hadn't planned my morning would be spent like that. At least not entirely so. It just was. The needs arose. The people came.

It's a case of being creative again.

Which I had to be at the lunchtime service, too, since the time I'd thought I'd have throughtout the morning to prepare just didn't exist at all the way it all worked out!

So expounding the passage of Scripture while thinking on my feet is an exercise again in creativity. I rely on the Lord to help me out. He being the great Creator himself of course.

These midweek lunchtime services are great. For the folk that come, for most of them at any rate, it's the one real way they get to share in the worshipping life of the people here.

A short half hour together in an act of public worship: and then the chance to eat and chat together over lunch. It's just sort of grown like Topsy into a weekly thing. That's somehow the creativity works. It just happens. Grows and develops quite naturally.

After lunch on a Wednesday I generally meet with one of the leaders here. I value the time with him. He's a long-standing friend with a down-to-earth wisdom and nous. Supportive and helpful.

And chatting things through with him like this, and rounding it off with prayer, that helps the creativity. Stimulates my thinking and gives clarity to thought.

After that it was down to some long-overdue work on the praise for the worship we'll be sharing on this coming Sunday night. A different sort of creativity again. Creating a memorable occasion where the presence of God can be known.

And before I knew it the morning and afternoon both were gone! The time just flies.

At night I was out once again. Meeting with folk in a sort of embryonic fellowship group. Just the five of us still. And we've started exploring Genesis. (As in the first book in the Bible).

What a great time we have. Addressing the questions quite honestly. And finding surprising vistas of truth. The whole thing comes alive.

Which I think never ceases to come as a major surprise to us all. Not that we don't expect God's word to be like that. It's just the way it comes alive is really very wonderful. Exciting just how apposite it is. How up to date.

I think we all felt that.

And I love the 'creativity' involved in bringing it alive.

There are few things quite as satisfying as that. So, yes, I love the work I do.

real food

I may in a sense be beginning again, but life gets back to normal pretty quick!

Varied, surprising, demanding.

It started with making the soup. One of the nights that I was down south I'd opted for soup at the restaurant. Cauliflower soup. Quite the most delicious caulie soup I've tasted for a while. It put me in the mood.

So I aimed to sort of replicate it here today. No recipe or anything like that. And I've never made such soup before, so the whole thing was a culinary experiment. Which included pears, creme freche, and a fair old dash of ground nutmeg.

It didn't taste too bad!

I much prefer to cook that sort of way. I gave my son a cookery book which works on similar lines. Nigel Slater's Real Food.

He doesn't really go in for weighing out quantities (Nigel Slater I mean. Though I suppose my son's the same). More feel and instinct and how the mood takes you. Do your own thing.

What I do with the 'larder' the Bible affords is much the same, I guess. I'm trying to take those raw 'ingredients' I find there in the Scriptures and serve them up in ways that are both nourishing and pleasing to the palate of the heart.

Like the whole business of making soup, that all takes time. Preparation time. I've tried to give some sort of time to that today. But there's not been much opportunity.

Other things. Other people. They all come crowding in.

Which is fine by me. Most of them unexpected, which makes life unpredictable.

A man who dropped by on the off chance that he'd find me in and free. Wanting to chat through the Global Day of Prayer (coming up on May 11th). How we might mark it here in this part of town.

It's a world-wide thing and really quite exciting when you see how many different folk are all involved across the globe. All joining together to pray. Millions and millions together. If that can't shift mountains I don't really know what can!

So here in the city of Edinburgh they've planned to use the seven hills and concentrate on seven major aspects of the city's life. And pray for the city in that sort of way.

So this guy, Douglas, was in to have a chat about the way we'd mark it here on our own local hill - Corstorphine Hill.

Then I had another Douglas, too. The usual one this time. Lunch and a time of prayer with him and a chance to catch up (it's been weeks since we've met) and chat things through with him.

There was a mother who's been involved with us here for a while, wanting to see about having her son baptised.

And another young woman whose grandmother died who was wondering if I would conduct a service of thanksgiving for her.

The lady who'd died belongs to another church. But she didn't get on with the minister there (that happens, I know!) and so they wondered what to do instead.

So this young woman had thought of myself, since she'd been at a funeral I'd conducted not that long ago and had felt that was just what she'd like for her own grandmother.

I don't like to tread on the toes of a fellow minister. But he seems quite happy and more than understands the situation. I've been there myself and know what it's like. But I'll need to give him a call and clear it all with him. Courtesy. That sort of thing.

Some time with another minister, keen for the chance to come along one Sunday night and share at least something of the work that he's involved in through the city. Making arrangements for that.

Seeing a number of others about different little things. Fixing up time for a longer chat and the chance to work things through.

People.

I'm grateful to the Lord that it's people my life revolves around.

I don't make soup as an end in itself. It's always because there are people. People with stomachs who're looking for food and looking for pleasure in that. People who are hungry, people who are cold, people who are glad of the chance both to meet and eat with others.

People with all their strange and funny idiosyncratic tastes.

But always people. That's why we make the soup. It's not an end in itself.

Nor is the study of Scripture. It's always with people in mind. These people here among whom I live and for whom I'm seeking the best. I want to be feeding their souls.

But it's not something that I can do on my own. It's only together, the whole big crowd of us here - it's only together we can ever give people a taste of what Jesus is like.

So tonight we all met. A formal sort of meeting. But nonetheless a chance to meet. And a chance to try and hammer out the future that God points us to.

Quite a bit of the day was spent preparing for that. I wanted to try and explain to the folk just why we are changing the pattern of leadership here. Which isn't easy. Explaining it all succinctly, I mean.

At least it made sense to some. A couple came up at the end of the night to thank me for the leadership I give. I appreciated that.

They've not been here that long. Not quite a year. But they've got the drift of what it is I'm on about and find themselves excited by it all.

I was glad that they spoke as they did. I need such warm encouragement from time to time. Just like it always helps a chef (not that I'm claiming to be much of a chef myself!) to know his meals are palatable and have done the eater good.

Which is why, when down in London, I had made a point at the end of the meal of thanking the staff and conveying to the chef the pleasure it had been for me to sample what they served.

We all need such encouragement.

beginning again

My previous post was headed 'the end'.

I realise now, in hindsight, that it may have been misinterpreted as ... well, the end. As in the end of my posts.

Over a week without a post won't have helped dispel the suspicions you may have had along those lines. However, no such luck!

I was simply away on holiday. And not in a position (or, indeed, the mood) to get myself near to an internet cafe and write a daily post.

It would only at best have been 'tourist' sort of stuff. I was down in London for a few days. I've a son who lives and works down there and I thought that I'd surprise him with a visit.

There aren't really many other reasons I can think of for my going to London town. I can't say I've ever really liked the place at all. But I was glad I'd gone and I think he was pretty chuffed when he pitched up at the restaurant for a romantic meal for two (with his girl-friend) and found me sitting there.

Surprise, surprise!

It's good to get away, I suppose. Standing back a little bit and seeing things from a slightly more detached perspective. London looks different from way up at the top of the London Eye or from the tiny little balcony high up at the top of St Paul's Cathedral.

A kind of Horatio Nelson outlook on all life.

So today, in the aftermath of some days away - in a far off city (and the far off world of the book that I was reading) - today's been a case of beginning again.

Getting back to the world of my calling and work. And reflecting again on what it is exactly that God's called me to.

It's had that feel of beginning again.

There were loads of e-mails, of course. Most of them quickly deleted, without a second look. Though even that takes time since there are hundreds and hundreds to work my way through. And some require an answer. (And some required their answer last week!)

It's mainly been planning ahead. Planning the midweek lunchtime service themes for the next twelve weeks or so. Planning the evening services right on 'til the end of June.

And in all of that there's the basic, patient exercise of seeking to discern the mind and will of God. What it is that he's intent on doing through the coming days. What it is he's saying to us all.

And I think it is this business of our simply beginning again to which he brings me back.

Like my desk. I started the day instinctively by clearing away the 'stuff' which littered the top of the desk. Mounds of the stuff.

Papers, notes, books, vouchers, files, cards. Masses of stuff. Which slowly just accumulates. All there for a good enough reason. I've thought I would need it. Or I'd better respond.

There's a reason for it all being there. But it left my desk a clutter.

So I cleared it all away. It wasn't as painful as maybe it sounds. Half of the stuff was long since out of date anyway.

I just cleared it all away. A pristine top, free from all the well-intentioned clutter. Does it not feel good to see a desk like that?!

Beginning again.

Sometimes I guess it's just that sort of thing we need to do within our lives and within Christ's church. What a lot of 'stuff' just ... accumulates.

A good enough reason why all of it's there. But it ends up just a clutter.

I think that's maybe how my life has got. As well as my desk. And maybe the church as well.

Tomorrow's a chance to start again. Our 'Stated Annual Meeting'.

Not quite an AGM, but the one chance in the year when all of us together get the opportunity to pause, take stock and review how things are going and the progress that we've made. Or not.

I met today in advance of that with those most closely involved. Just to go over the form the evening will take. And how things best are done.

Tomorrow's a chance to set before the people here a 'route map' for the days and years ahead. A chance for us all to be beginning again.