Today has been full, good and just a wee bit fatiguing! I was preaching in Aberdeen at Crown Terrace and met up again with many folk who are the kind of friends sensible people hang on to – and we are sensible people! We drove up this morning and back late this afternoon – life’s lacking some commonsense pace at the moment.
Mind you though they are my friends, that doesn’t guarantee an easy time. They asked me to preach on Nehemiah 3 – have you ever preached on a passage that reads like a fabric convenor’s report – or a site manager’s worksheets, written up to impress the CEO? Well, here as always in the Bible, chapter 3 only makes sense if it follows chapters 1 and 2 and is followed by the rest of the story. Context. Narrative. Texture of human activity. Removal of pious-find a spiritual application at any cost – spectacles. And what you are left with is the story of how a community rebuilt itself by rebuilding city walls. And that long seemingly tedious chapter 3, written out by some conscientious charge-hand, to record for all who came later, how those who broke sweat together also broke bread together; how perfumers got black nails and goldsmiths got blisters from using a spade; and how they all worked side by side, this one next the other. And don’t tell me they didn’t argue, or fall out, or think negative thoughts about each other – but they got the job done; the building site was the place where community was reborn.
John Newton once likened sanctification to a building site – whether the individual or the church, he saw Christian growth as a sometimes messy, hard to see progress kind of process. The scaffolding, the rubble waiting to be cleared; the messy, dubious, activities of builders and labourers who you hope know what they are doing. I love that image – I used to work in a brickwork so I know about mess, muck and blisters – and I do think there are times when my own inner life, and the life of most Christian communities, is more like a building site than a building, more a work in process than the finished thing. And I happen to think God can live with the mess, so long as it is mess on the way to being something else! Anyway, some of that was what I preached.
Then we had lunch with two of our best friends. I met Douglas and Helen at a mission when Douglas was a young minister in Dundee and we ran a children’s club legendary for its pulsating energy, noise and fun. They are two of the finest people I know, whose service to Christ can’t be calculated on any scale I can think of.
Then back down the road on a beautiful autumn, with the Mearns turning towards yellow, gold and brown, with a blue sky and the bales and rolls of straw in the fields. A beautiful day, and now, after a long soak, I’m just letting you know – life’s good, even if at times a bit messy. But God can live with the mess, so long as it’s on the way to being something else.
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