Old friends and the importance of prayer

Yesterday I went back to the place where I had been minister up until 16 years ago. (I started there 21 years ago as a rookie straight out of college) It was a time of mixed emotions. The building looked the same but it was the people I went to see. There were several gaps where people who had played a key part during my time there were no longer around. (I like the phrase - "Promoted to glory") Sixteen years can turn a working man into a retired man or a young man into middle age and women also become more mature! They were very kind and said I hadn't changed at all! (Which of course isn't true)

We had many conversations which began with do you remember when... and it was good to remember.

It did my ego good to hear that they looked back to my days there with affection because the church was often full and we regularly had to put extra chairs in the aisles. Someone suggested that this was because I went to the prayer group every week. I hadn't really thought about that before - but every Tuesday morning I would set aside time to go and do nothing but pray and chat and have coffee and biscuits in Carole's sitting room. Since my time there the prayer group has continued but the ministers who have succeeded me have never attended the prayer group.

Those were difficult years for us as we coped as a family with the pressures of manse life, peoples often unrealistic expectations and the demands of a very young family. That little prayer meeting was an oasis for me in the week where I could be with God in the presence of trusted people where I was not afraid to show I was human and fallible too! So what I had done as a selfish "for me" exercise had been seen to benefit the church in positive ways. If only every church had a small group like that with its own "Carole" - a firm foundation who despite her own problems encouraged others and was steadfast in her faithfulness. Never underestimate the power of prayer!

Repent!

Lots of people want to return to their childhood it seems. I deduce this from the popularity of friends reunited, facebook and other sites that help us trace those we used to know. But would we really want to go back to the school where we sat in tiny desks in neat rows! I think we just want to go back to satisfy our insatiable curiosity when we ask "I wonder whatever happened to such a body?!"

Repent does not mean going back in terms of recreating what once was. (or what we think it once was like which is different!) Repentance is much more like following a sat nav!

I was travelling last weekend and we turned off the motorway to drive into town to get fuel. The driver was collecting points on her supermarket card and only wanted a tesco petrol station. But the sat nav didn't like it. "Turn round" it kept repeating in an agonisingly polite but annoyed voice. I cannot imagine that people enjoy machines nagging them in this way but it was not my car. And all the way to tesco the voice continued until after we had refuelled and turned round. Then it began to redirect us back onto our route home.

Repentance is about getting back on the right route - making the right turning and not going off on some interesting but irrelevant byway.

Followers of Jesus were originally called "followers of the way". I wonder if we can reclaim that name with Jesus as our lord, sat nav and guide!

Advent

This is a special time of preparation but what am I preparing for? Is it the annual round of Christmas services? (yes I have a work plan sketched out all ready!) The feasts I will attend and enjoy?! (I wonder, if I am abstemious now will the pounds not pile on if I stuff myself later?!) The second coming of Christ? (uhmmm? you what?) That traditional advent theme is not something I usually concentrate on at this time of year. But it is there in the set readings for the Sundays of Advent.

My reason for not majoring on this theme is that it often seems to have been hi-jacked with those who want to use it as a pretext to attack others. "When he comes again he will make straight the pathway" has been interpreted by some who want to say "I am right and you are wrong and when God comes he will prove me right and then you will know it!" As someone who believes in shades of gray in issues that some consider black and white I do not find such an attitude helpful.

Christmas celebrates incarnation - God with us and resurrection continues this theme. Life with its many ups and downs, with its contradictions and paradoxes can have meaning, direction and purpose because God is with us. God is with us in the questions as in all of life's rich tapestry. God's continuing second coming is God's presence with us at each moment. At Christmas we celebrate that Jesus was born in Bethlehem and so was with the people then in a physical, fleshly way. Many saintly people have emphasised the presence of God with them. The last recorded words of John Wesley were "The best of all is, God is with us."