Bone Idle

It feels like a bit of a challenge to move back into employment.

I’ve been in that ambiguous state that could be regarded either as “between churches” or “retired early”. Life for me has mostly gone on at a stately pace.

Many senior Christians with busier personalities and better connections than mine fill their time to capacity, even without paid employment. “We are so busy now we are retired,” they cry, “that we don’t know how we found time to work!”

When I’ve been at home, I’ve got by through having a daily routine. Behind it all are twin basic aims: to make sure to speak to someone and to get out of the four walls each day.

The routine involves plenty of time spent behind a desk. I have a rich and varied devotional time in the mornings. Then comes preaching and teaching preparation. At some point in the day I will go out walking or shopping for an hour or so, always hoping to have a chat to at least one other person on the way. Other elements in the mix include educational TV watching and a great deal of resting. Apart from that, filling the hours has often been a matter of doing the rounds of coffee events like an old timer!

The opportunity to do guest house ministry in Wales has been a Godsend. This season I will have spent some 60 days in Llandudno and Conwy. This has given me a real focus of interest.

To be fair to myself, I have endeavoured to do volunteering work in my local community, and have been enriched by joining community organisations. Yet it’s amazing how often you find you simply aren’t needed.

All in all, I can understand why people go on pre-retirement courses; it is very easy to vegetate if you don’t plan for all those empty hours and set goals for yourself.

What does the great adventure of a new pastorate do for my use of time? In many ways that remains to be seen. When you are looking after one small church, there are limits to what you can do. I know some pastors who cope with that by deliberately making work for themselves in order to justify their existence. That is not my approach. Of course I hope the new appointment will generate enough activity, as the months go by, to keep me fully occupied simply doing what God puts my way. Until that happens, my pattern may not look vastly different from the routine described above. But I would rather be busy in God’s way than mine.

The Bible is firm with idle and lazy people.

Go to the ant, O sluggard;
consider her ways, and be wise.
Without having any chief, officer, or ruler,
she prepares her bread in summer
and gathers her food in harvest.
How long will you lie there, O sluggard?
When will you arise from your sleep?
A little sleep, a little slumber,
a little folding of the hands to rest,
and poverty will come upon you like a robber,
and want like an armed man.

(Proverbs 6:6-11 ESV)

“Be diligent,” counselled John Wesley right at the start of his “Twelve Rules of a Helper”. “Never be unemployed a moment. Never be triflingly employed. Never while away time.” And lower down: “You have nothing to do but to save souls. Therefore spend and be spent in this work.”

It did him no harm; he lived for some 88 years! At the same time, being human is about “being” as well as “doing”, and I trust Christians will encourage church workers to have sanctified leisure as well as being busy, busy, busy. Our Saviour sets the pattern.

On the lone mountain side,
Before the morning’s light,
The Man of sorrows wept and cried,
And rose refreshed with might.

Oh, hear us then, for we
Are very weak and frail,
We make the Saviour’s Name our plea,
And surely must prevail. 

From C.H. Spurgeon, "Sweetly the holy hymn" in Hymns for an Early Morning Prayer Meeting (perhaps inspired by Matthew 14:23 “And after he had dismissed the crowds, he went up on the mountain by himself to pray. When evening came, he was there alone …” )