At the moment I'm living out of a suitcase. Hence no entry in this blog last weekend. I hope you're patiently sticking with me.
As a student, I was used to this sort of existence. However, you expect to be more settled after student days. Even if you experience a number of house moves, you hope and expect that certain things will remain familiar: your family, your network of friends, your profession, places that you call "home" wherever you happen to live at the time.
Whether this is God's intention for the human race is not so clear. He never allowed His people Israel to forget that they were once nomadic tent-dwellers, depending on Him to guide their every move. Jesus claimed that while foxes had holes and the birds of the air had nests, He had nowhere to lay His head.
Right now I feel as though I have well and truly joined the club. I am house-sitting for someone, which is great as it helps me avoid living next to a church whose pastorate I have left. Seventy miles away, my worldly goods fill endless mounds of storage bins. I have yet to move out of the Manse but it is clearly no longer home.
I've struggled to relax so far, because my mind is in self-preservation mode and working overtime. However, I calmed myself this evening by playing a very old hymn, "God be in my head". God is in every part of me, right now, and I must live life positively for Him. At the same time, the hymn comes from an age when journey's end, eternal life in the next world, loomed so much larger for people than it does today. From the ancient words I take quiet satisfaction that, when my day is done, God will be there still:
God be at mine end
and at my departing.
Saturday 21 August 2010
Sunday 8 August 2010
The leaving do
I've just been to my leaving do and survived.
To get leaving events right (assuming you are allowed a say in it) is a matter of experience and judgement. I had one once where there was a big garden party on the Saturday afternoon. The trouble was, everyone put the maximum effort in to make it work, and the two services on the Sunday had a terrible air of anticlimax as a result. Given that it was Pentecost Sunday, that was unfortunate in the extreme.
This time we did things differently. Everything was concentrated into one day. There was a service in the morning and a tea in the afternoon followed by a short act of worship. The mix worked. I had liberty of the Spirit in preaching and the day had a positive atmosphere.
And now? After a short spell of annual leave, I move into the position of being in between churches. That's my euphemism for pastoral unemployment. An unemployed actor is "resting"; an unemployed pastor is "in between churches". May that interval be short. At the same time, God in His wisdom will surely not supply a new pastorate until I am again ready to cope with one.
To get leaving events right (assuming you are allowed a say in it) is a matter of experience and judgement. I had one once where there was a big garden party on the Saturday afternoon. The trouble was, everyone put the maximum effort in to make it work, and the two services on the Sunday had a terrible air of anticlimax as a result. Given that it was Pentecost Sunday, that was unfortunate in the extreme.
This time we did things differently. Everything was concentrated into one day. There was a service in the morning and a tea in the afternoon followed by a short act of worship. The mix worked. I had liberty of the Spirit in preaching and the day had a positive atmosphere.
And now? After a short spell of annual leave, I move into the position of being in between churches. That's my euphemism for pastoral unemployment. An unemployed actor is "resting"; an unemployed pastor is "in between churches". May that interval be short. At the same time, God in His wisdom will surely not supply a new pastorate until I am again ready to cope with one.
Sunday 1 August 2010
Asking for help
It's a spiritual leap forward when you have to go to complete strangers and ask for help. It's another spiritual leap forward when help arrives without you even having to ask for it.
Until my Dad died in 1983 I used to think of myself as normally "muddling through". I lived on my own but felt quite self-sufficient. When Dad passed away I had to travel 250 miles to where Mum was and sort out matters that were completely outside my experience. I had no choice but to turn to strangers whom my parents' friends had recommended and plead, "We are bereaved and I need your expertise quickly. Can you help?" It was a great feeling when willing and timely help arrived.
This is a powerful symbol of God's free grace. Even the most capable of us is helpless to reach heaven, but Jesus helped me when a stranger.
It is even more humbling when the help comes without you even asking for it. As I enter my last month as minister at my current church, a difficult house move looms as well as unemployment. Yet many friendly offers have come in unbidden to make that move look manageable now. I see God's hand in it and am hugely thankful.
I am not normally a Prayer Book man, but the prayer for wisdom comes to mind: "Almighty God, the fountain of all wisdom, who knowest our necessities before we ask, and our ignorance in asking …" I feel embarrassed but enormously thankful when God gives me answers to prayers which I have never even prayed.
My last Sunday at the church is a week away. I face the ordeal with a growing sense that God's grace is preparing me for something worthwhile beyond that.
Until my Dad died in 1983 I used to think of myself as normally "muddling through". I lived on my own but felt quite self-sufficient. When Dad passed away I had to travel 250 miles to where Mum was and sort out matters that were completely outside my experience. I had no choice but to turn to strangers whom my parents' friends had recommended and plead, "We are bereaved and I need your expertise quickly. Can you help?" It was a great feeling when willing and timely help arrived.
This is a powerful symbol of God's free grace. Even the most capable of us is helpless to reach heaven, but Jesus helped me when a stranger.
It is even more humbling when the help comes without you even asking for it. As I enter my last month as minister at my current church, a difficult house move looms as well as unemployment. Yet many friendly offers have come in unbidden to make that move look manageable now. I see God's hand in it and am hugely thankful.
I am not normally a Prayer Book man, but the prayer for wisdom comes to mind: "Almighty God, the fountain of all wisdom, who knowest our necessities before we ask, and our ignorance in asking …" I feel embarrassed but enormously thankful when God gives me answers to prayers which I have never even prayed.
My last Sunday at the church is a week away. I face the ordeal with a growing sense that God's grace is preparing me for something worthwhile beyond that.
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