babel

A couple of Germans came in today for a coffee.

Tourists. They weren't quite sure of their way. And they didn't have any loose change: or not the right amount, at any rate.

Their English was hardly great. But they'd twigged what the little word 'exact' meant, though 'fare' was more of a challenge. I think they thought that 'fair' meant something different from having the right coins in your pocket.

I got chatting a bit with them. With the emphasis on the 'bit'. My German isn't great. In fact it's virtually non-existent, gleaned as it is from World War II 'trash mags'.

"Gutten morgen," I ventured.

"Gutten morgen," came back the reply, a glimmer of hope in their eyes. "Sprechen ze deutsch?"

"Nein!"

You see, I told you the conversation didn't last all that long.

I walked them up to the bus-stop. My German wasn't anything like up to explaining where it was and which side of the road they should be on. Easier by far just to take them.

Sometimes it's not always easy to understand what an other person's saying. We speak a different language.

There's a crowd of women who always come in on a Tuesday. This is the crowd who used to meet in a local pub on a Tuesday morning. They love our place, though, now, and wouldn't ever wish to go back.

They're a great bunch and I usually stop to chat with them. Since they were having some strawberry gateau today, I sat and shared a coffee (and the cake) with them all.

It's strange how easily misunderstandings arise. You assume someone else has heard what you have said. But it's not always so.

We'd been chatting away about holidays. But we got our wires rather crossed.

I'd explained how I would be off to Harris to spend my holidays there. But one of the ladies was sure I had said I'd be off to Harrods for my holidays. As if.

It must be the way her mind works or something.

But the conversation continued awhile with the two of us feeding entirely different meanings into the word that when spoken by me was Harris and was heard by her as Harrods.

Which is different, of course. Very different. And extremely confusing.

It sometimes takes a while to figure out just why it's so confusing. We're speaking two different languages. We're pouring two different meanings into the word or words we use.

It wasn't disastrous this morning, of course. We just had a good old laugh when we figured out what the problem was.

I like the ship to the island. She likes to shop: and comes from Ireland.

We sound the same. But we're speaking a different language.

I even spoke a couple of words of French later on at night. In a meeting of 'in-between church' leaders from all over town.

I don't often speak at these meetings. But an issue came up and I felt obliged to clarify just what the issue was: and why it was being handled in the way it was.

It's been a contentious issue down the years among these leaders here. And I've been involved before.

So I said that there was a sense of deja vu. (My French is hardly brilliant, but it can rise to that)

The issue was getting debated at two entirely different levels.

We all spoke English, of course (apart from my stabs at French: and the occasional use of Latin, things like in hunc effectum, to describe a coming meeting, a form of words that dates, sadly like a lot we do, to a former, forgotten age)

But in terms of what we were saying we were really speaking two different languages.

No wonder folk get confused.

And in a sense, no wonder, as well, that one of the leaders resigned. There and then. In public.

I can't say I've seen that before in all the time I've been here. But there was just a hint of deja vu about the thing as well.

Yes, I know what deja vu means. 'Already seen'.

And I know I've just said that I haven't seen that before. But I saw, or I sensed, a thing pretty close to that when big church was meeting a few weeks back.

The hurt and the pain and the feeling of total confusion. The sense of our being on two different planes, and the sense that there was that while we might use the same words we in fact speak two different languages.

The Harris and Harrods confusion.

And people walking out.

It almost happened again last night, later on.

Such feelings of hurt and betrayal, in an entirely different connection, that a man got up and started lambasting another significant leader, alleging a manner of conduct suggestive of bullying force.

I haven't seen that before either, in all of my time here.

But again there was still that sense of deja vu.

What the man was expressing was just what a lot of folk felt when big church met those few weeks back.

And I think I'm seeing a pattern here emerging. Confusion and hurt and division and anger and people beginning to leave.

Babel. In the Church.

The confusion of language all over again. We use the same words while we mean two different things. Harris and Harrods.

It feels like Babel's begun.

'Sin' - to call a spade a spade, and use the word the good book tends to use - 'sin' is essentially disintegrative. It breaks apart what God has joined together. It fragments.

And whenever sin comes in, things start to fragment. Break apart.

Language gets confused. People fall out. The project begins to fragment.

I think that's what I'm seeing now. In big church. And tonight again at in-between church too.

'Sin' is sometimes arrogance. Putting ourselves in the place of God and deciding how things should be done.

'Sin' is sometimes, too, bound up with fear. A lack of trust in God whereby we resort to our own devices to preserve ourselves.

Babel began with that sort of sin. Arrogance and fear.

But Babel has no future. Confusion sets in. The judgment of God.

"Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other."

Our own little Babel's being built in these days.

And we're starting to see the confusion.

The slow but very steady fragmentation of the ecclesiastial edifice that big church wished to build.

The only future any Babel has is, in the end, confusion and decay.

Deja vu.

catering

No two days are alike. Which certainly makes for a varied life!

There was the school, for a start. Even that was a little bit different today. For the first time in all of the weeks I've been there the children were being challenged and almost rebuked by the Head. In a gracious sort of way, for sure, but he was getting the message across.

Citizenship was his theme, the value he has for this month.

And today in particular he was on about courage. The need for such courage to be shown by us all as part of what citizenship means. The courage to stand up for what's right. The courage to speak up for others. The courage to stick out your neck and do the right thing.

It's good, educational stuff. He even had to explain what a 'parapet' is.

Courage. It struck a chord, and I almost felt the force of the man's rebuke myself!

It's certainly courage that's needed these days. A boldness from God to stand on his truth and defy all the trends that there are to distort and dilute what he's said.

So 'courage' rang bells in my heart all right. But 'compassion' as well was a theme that the Head man pursued.

And that's been a part of today.

Compassion towards a family where the pain of bereavement is real. There's a service of thanksgiving to be held tomorrow for the person who died. A person I've never met.

I was round seeing the family earlier on this week. I know them a bit, through their girls being at school and their coming along to the services some of the time.

A lovely family. And it's been good to get a small feel of this further dimension, a generation back on the three girls' father's side. It was his mother who'd died.

Her husband and son had prepared a few notes. And that's been a help, as always.

But these notes are no more than the palette of paints from which I've to paint up the portrait of just who this lady had been.

A portrait that's easily recognised: and a portrait that shows up the image of God in each one of our lives as well.

I'm not the world's fastest 'painter', I have to say. It takes me time to craft such a portrait with words.

And a fair bit of time has been spent on just that today. There won't be the time tomorrow.

Today's been about the grief of a very different family too.

A couple who worship, not here, but just down the road - their 30 year old son had died in his sleep out in Australia. The young man, I think, was a hugely charismatic sort of guy, who made a massive impression on just about everyone he met.

Sore beyond words for his parents back here.

There was a memorial service this afternoon at the church-down-the-road. Hundreds of folk turned out. Old and young alike. And then they pitched up here for their cup of tea.

By arrangement. Sort of, anyway.

We hadn't quite realised to start with that it wasn't just the halls that were being booked. It was our catering services too!

But we'd sussed it out by yesterday and so were as much prepared as could be.

We were short on staff, though, with folk being away, so I was drafted in. Serving the teas and the coffees, and things like that.

I enjoy the chance that it gives to mingle with folk. And in the very manner that I serve them to afford them a measure of comfort and care at a time of distress and grief.

One of the ladies asked me which catering company I worked for. 'The best' is the answer, I guess. No one caters for all our needs as well as the Lord.

It's that which I want folk to see.

Now the day has been full of a whole load else. A number of other people - some popping in for a moment or two, some calling by by appointment, some that I've seen in their homes.

People. All with their different needs.

And, yes, that's the bottom line always.

No one caters for all of our needs as well as the Lord. I'm glad, and I count it a privilege indeed, to work for him.

R.I.P.

One of our elders died last week and a service of thanksgiving was held today.

A fair bit of time this morning was spent in preparing for that. Not so much the content of the service, since I'd attended to that last night: more the practicalities of getting the orders of service produced.

Plus I had a man coming in to see me mid-morning. And the last of the lunch time services meanwhile.

The man who was in to see me is someone whose friendship I've learned to value across the years.

These last few years I've seen him a whole lot more than I used to do. He's lived a long, long way away. But he's moving here, so I should get to see him some more.

He's a guy who knows about prayer. And there's a lot of prayer that's needed right now. So it's good to have him in the loop and informed. He knows how to press the buttons and get others to pray as well.

By the time we were done (well, we weren't really done at all, but the clock had put in an hour and a half of ticks, and the service was due to start!), it was straight on into the 'end-of-term' lunchtime service.

Bread and wine included. Rounding the whole year off.

We've been with the story of Joseph now for the whole of the year. It was kind of fitting that our thoughts today were on Joseph's Dad and the way, as he came to his end, he prayed God's blessing on his grandsons.

Which gets me back to the service of thanksgiving for Eddie.

His daughter read some tributes from his four American grandchildren. And his son gave a well-worded tribute to his father's life. Not an easy thing to do, but he did it well, and he kept his emotions pretty much in hand.

Until he got to his final lines when he quoted the prophet Micah. The famous bit. Well, one of the famous bits from the book of Micah.

He has showed you, O man, what is good.

And what does the Lord require of you

but to act justly, to love mercy,

and to walk humbly with your God.

It's that famous I can quote it here without even looking it up.

That, said his son, was as good a description as any of his father's life.

It puts it all in a nutshell.

Relationship with God - issuing then in a certain sort of character and a certain sort of conduct. Which somehow strangely breathes God's gracious blessing right on down through all succeeding generations.

It's not that complicated really.

You just start walking with your God.

And the rest follows. In both senses!

mil1lion

Someone I know very well was in touch with me this morning.

Excited. To say the least.

This person had just had a telephone call. Someone on the other end whose name rang no bells at all.

It was a call from a restaurant. This person I know very well had, the day before, been the restaurant's one millionth customer.

And, to celebrate, the restaurant was gifting two return air tickets to New York. Which suited this person I know very well very well. He'd been hoping to go there before the year was out.

He was totally bowled over. One in a million indeed!

Of course, if you'd been the 999,999th customer, you'd have felt pretty gutted. Like, if you'd not been quite so impatient and had let the guy behind you get in first ....

But, then, I guess if you were the 999,999th customer you'd never know. They don't ring you up for that and tell you, Sorry, you were one off the jackpot!

I wonder how many times that's been me. 999,999th, and I didn't know just how close I had been to being the one in a million guy.

No wonder this person I know very well was over the moon. And soon to be over the Atlantic.

To be that one in a million is a great and wonderful feeling.

Special. Made a fuss of.

I was thinking back over today and what it's involved. And it crossed my mind that all of the things that I'm doing each day are really along those lines.

Giving that sense of being one in a million to all of the people I meet.

Everything I do, I do it all for you.

When people come in for their coffees and teas and their lunches, that's how we try and make them feel.

That they'e one in a million. Getting the special treatment. That we're focussed on them and on meeting their needs. That they matter. That they're not just a face in the crowd.

We were a bit short-staffed with the volume of people today. So I was there and helping them out when I could. Giving folk time. Serving them food. Meeting their needs.

We like to try and ensure that this is a place to which they can come where they'll always be made to feel that they're really that one in a million.

Which is just how the Lord treats each of us, of course.

Jesus and Zacchaeus for instance.

Now, OK, there weren't a million people living in Jericho. I presume. But there were certainly crowds.

And out of the crowds it's this number-crunching accountant (who knows all that there is to know about statistics, and who's long since learned that because of his size and his job and a whole load else he's not even a face in the crowd - he's too small to even figure) - it's this little man who gets to know the one in a million feeling.

Your house, says Jesus. I must come to your house today for tea.

Jesus does the one in a million feeling better than anyone else.

And, like I say, that's what today has been like.

'Little' things mainly. But little things that make the big and little people, all alike, feel somehow they matter. That they're one in a million. Special.

Those for whom the Lord himself has time. Those for whom the Lord himself would go to any lengths. Nothing too much and nothing too hard.

I think that's what Francis (the nature-loving, 'animal' guy) was on about when he said to preach the gospel at all times: and if need be use words.

Give folk the one in a million feeling.

Surprise them, astound them, enrich them with the unexpected phone calls and the things you're glad to give them and to do for them they hadn't even dreamed of.

mil1lion

(Have you never played Dingbats? That's Dingbats for one in a million)

grace

Saturday was the Children's Gala here.

It's always a great day. Especially if the weather's good. Which it was. In the main.

The sun shone. And the whole of the local community - so it seems - comes out for a massive picnic.

It's a brilliant occasion. The folk who organise it work round the clock through the year to make it happen. And the result is terrific.

There's the chance to meet so many different people and to take in so many things. Everyone's there.

Including 'the king'. None other than Elvis, strutting his stuff across the stage and singing his famous songs.

(A bit too loud for some of the older folk, but the grounds are pretty spacious and you can choose to keep your distance!)

The guy spoiled the effect just a bit, I guess, when he said "Hi. My name's Danny". But he offered his singing for free and it added to all of the fun.

It's that sort of occasion. Everyone chips in.

Rosaly was this year's "Gracious Lady". And she filled the role superbly.

They always choose a person who's contributed to the community. And Rosaly fits the bill.

All that she's done in the Holiday Clubs down the years.

All that she's done in teaching the children each week on a Sunday morning.

All that she does as a sort of unofficial chaplain in the stroke unit of the Royal Victoria.

All that she does in heading up and running our 'Reception Area' here. The teas and the coffees and lunches each week.

She's the one who heads it up. And a more gracious lady you'd surely be hard put to find.

We had a kind of 'management team meeting' this morning. A sort of 'working breakfast', I think they probably call it in the business world.

Except it was a bit more breakfast than work. And it spilled over into coffee time as well. In fact, almost into lunch by the time we were done.

It's a regular time of planning, review and ... well, being grateful to God for all that we're able to share in with him in this work.

It's fitting that the 'gracious lady' should head it up. Because grace is really what underlies it all.

The folk who run it week by week, and the folk who come in to help and to serve - they're all just volunteers. They, all of them, do it for nothing.

And that spirit of grace pervades it all. Our hope and our prayer is that everyone should in one way or another experience the grace of God. Even if they don't really recognise it as such.

It's great to see the way that many folk who come in first of all as hard as nails - battered and bruised from the storms of life and often pretty defensive - it's great to see the way they bit by bit relax, and warm to these simple, kindly overtures of grace.

An experience of the grace of God.

I suppose that's what our life here, day by day, is all about.

We hd an interesting dicussion at night about that sort of thing.

One of the guys has kept on having a clear and nagging sense of the Lord really speaking with him along these lines.

Sort of along the lines of a 'monastic' way of life. Not the celibate, remove-yourself-from-the-world sort of thing.

But a life lived in community, with a focus on the Lord, and a life that would be lived the way the Lord has always meant it should be lived.

He'd thought about getting an island to start this community life. And he'd thought of it more in terms of sheer survival.

All the signs are that unless things radically change in the next few years we're likely to have crossed the 'tipping point' and things could go fast down-hill in terms of climate change. And he sees not a lot of evidence of political will to effect the sort of changes that we need.

Hence the idea of an island. A refuge. Or an 'ark', as he later put it.

We chatted at length about the thing. It excites me the way this guy is on the button and has heard this 'call' from the Lord.

We figured that maybe the 'island' could be a figurative sort of thing. An 'island' of believing folk, as it were, in the midst of a wider community. As a model of the way life can and should be lived.

An 'island' where the grace of God can be seen and known by one and all across the whole of life.

He's off on holiday soon. (Not to an island, I should add).

And he's going to do some work on this!

good times, bad times

A typical Thursday.

Though I'm beginning to wonder if any two days are ever remotely alike!

It seems a while since I've been at the school. The summer term is often a bit like that, with all sorts of extras disrupting the normal routines.

Two assemblies, both on the value for the month - 'citizenship'. And both involving a fair amount of awards being given out. Since they'd had their sports day last week.

It was straight back here into meeting with folk again. Folk that I needed to see.

And before I know it another half day has gone. The moments rush by. But people need time and the time spent with people today has been good and worthwhile.

The same in the afternoon. And the evening, too, when I pause and reflect on it all.

People, people, people.

Coping with grief, arranging a marriage, adjusting to illness.

Through all the changing scenes of life,

in trouble and in joy,

the praises of my God shall still

my heart and tongue employ.

The ups and downs of life. Bad things happen, same as good things. It's a package deal.

But the Lord remains the same. Always there. Always willing to help. Always able to cope.

Fear him, you saints, and you will then

have nothing else to fear;

make you his service your delight,

he'll make your wants his care.

I'm thinking it's a good song with which to end the day! And I was reminded of it again because the folk who were in arranging their wedding tonight had asked for this song to be sung.

There's a lot that's still to be done this week. And a day like this when it's people and people throughout ... well, the rest of the stuff needing done begins to stack up even more!

Make you his service your delight (which I do, I love it), he'll make your wants (and I've got loads) his care (he'd better, because I'll be in big, big trouble otherwise!).

attention-seeking

There are times when death demands our attention.

Like some spoilt child, it rudely interrupts all else that is going on to insist that we don't forget this simple fact of all our earthly lives - we die.

There's been a lot of that these past few days.

Folk for whom a parent's passed away.

One of our leaders, yesterday - who always looked so young (despite being up in his seventies) and who always had a warm and courteous smile across his face - he passed away in hospital after a quick and sudden illness.

And then, at night, as well, I was round to see a man who's got ... well, he doesn't exactly know how long he's got, except that it's not that long.

"God's been good," he declared as I sat with him and his wife.

Not that the man's not had an ample share of troubles, sorrows and hurts.

But he wanted to think of the good things. Sound advice for all of us.

The gift of his wife, a love in which their spirits are simply woven together as one.

The gift of his home, a delightful flat in beautiful grounds, spacious and bright and a home that they'd done up together. I hadn't been there before, but I could see straight off what he meant.

And the gift of a thousand little providential things, each one a token of a God who's there and a God who cares and a God who takes an interest in us all. Down to the smallest detail.

The guy's not a hugely spiritual man, or anything like that. 'Church' has not been a thing that's figured large across the radar of his life. At least I don't get that impression.

But he's quick to learn; and quick to embrace the gentle, timely overtures of God's good grace extended to him now. And quick to relate to the message of this Jesus who has risen from the dead.

When you're facing the grave yourself, I guess it assumes a certain pressing relevance.

Death may well demand our attention.

But it's been well and truly attended to. Very truly. And very well.