A day of many parts

The day started with the usual routine of daily Office, usually occurs anywhere in the morning from 03:30 onwards (usually finding itself at 04:30 it seems as the first thing I do when I wake). This is the opportunity to read the Bible and pray, setting up the day that follows as the spiritual equivalent of porridge for it sustained me throughout the day, in the stillness before the dawn aririves.

I blog the readings each morning (there is a growing group of people who use the condensed form I post as part of their introduction to doing the Office) as part of growing discipline in myself and others.  So, Office done, there's some post-production work on a recording to be sorted and then it's into the church building to set up for the Thursday Communion and the drop-in that follows it. Chairs out, orders of service and Bibles on the seats, lay up for the Communion, fill the urn (and turn it on - always important). Then it's the tables and chairs, biscuits and stuff for the two hours that follow after the Eucharist is done.

I rejoice at the Psalm in Communion today (118) it's like a sweet jar full of old favourite sentences and they bounce around my head all day: The stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone - Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord - Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good; his love endures forever. Words that sustain.

How sad that we have lost the Psalms as part of our public worship in so many places - sadder still the contraction to just two readings! Jesus, the Christ, is the capstone which holds it all together - Hallelujah! We share the word and celebrate the resurrection and recommit ourselves to shime in the dark places of our town - for we are salt and light.
What does that look like?
How will you use me to make You known today?
Where will my feet take me and what do I need other than You?
So many questions and challenges buzzing, then and now as bed is made my hiding place with you.

The drop-in was amazing, so many people with so many issues, yet laughed and encounter and the joy of being family for those who known the Christ and those perhaps a little far off - just as it shou,d be for first they stop, then the sit and then they recline - aren't people amazing and isn't God great?

Onto a meeting and finding joy in the shape of a nearby church and the steps to be taken there - little steps bring a great distance in the passage of time - the key is to take them! Back to the START course where it transpired that when looking at who our hero is Jesus want mine! Shock or what?
We talk and look at the heroes society has in its sportsmen and women: overpaid, indulged, living wrong lives and et emulated and applauded, is that what a hero is? Move on to great leaders, commanders, businessmen and women: is victory or success the key to making a hero? Nah, when we look past their achievements and their fine words we find feet of clay,

As we talk about why I live the life I do, flawed fallible, excited and generally weird I mention that I am, and do, because Jesus is MY LOVE, and that's the word - it is LOVE, not HERO, that we need to be thinking of and looking to emulate, to please and to follow. How absolutely amazingly wonderfully brilliant is that? His love endures for ever.

Buzzing I prepare and head of to ke a bunch of ten ann eleven year olds around a church building and share some of the wonderful treasures, explaining symbolism and imagery, and making the love of God as seen in Jesus, God made man, known. Making time running around the church and pointing out stuff that is usually missed - making connections - explaining liturgicalbits and giving little hooks  and sowing seeds. How I love this life which so many others seem to think is a job. I'm working, and for, with the person I love - can it get any more wonderful?

And it does - for I find myself in the ditch it's the woman I love, half a pint and a pork pie and some time to chat and meet new people and enjoy the woman whose lives surrounds and sustains me also.

Lord, I am just so very blessed!

All before me was joy today: The engagements, the conversations, the opportunities seen and taken. The written word and the living Word filling and sustaining and guiding me.

Thanks for a great day - same again tomorrow please?

Heroes of the Faith: Charles Simeon

The Chapel at Ridley Hall has as an West window some stained glass commemorating Charles Simeon (Pictured Left) and I, as a student there would oft find myself sitting beneath it and it was because of this that I decided that I'd best find out a little more about the bloke.

Charles Simeon (1759-1836) was, for some fifty-three years, the senior minister at Holy Trinity Church and a fellow of King’s College for fifty-four! He is truly an man of the Word and his life's work was dedicated to making the Bible more accessible and understood - so no better place for him to appear on a window than in his beloved Cambridge and on the window of a place dedicated to educating would-be ministers of the Gospel in their craft. Would that those who came out of the Vicar factory there were has as able a preacher and teacher as this man!

I have to admit that along with my desire to have Barth's Church Dogmatics (fulfilled) on my shelves is that of having a copy of Simeon's Horae Homileticae (his preaching notes) and the time to read them.

From this man's inspired teaching and lifestyle many were to leave Cambridge to take the word of God out into the world; and it should be no surprise to learn that he also had a hand in the creation of many societies concerned with spreading the Gospel. I love the fact that he regarded those he trained as brothers rather than the 'curates' or 'my vicars' as some with paucity of character might do - for he welcomed and supported all who worked with him in the vineyard as brothers!

He was instrumental in founding the following

Church Missionary Society (1797)

Religious Tract Society (1799) - merged and became Lutterworth Press

British and Foreign Bible Society (1804)

Church's Ministry Among Jewish People (CMJ)
(1809 was the London Society for Promoting Christianity Among the Jews)

Here we have a man who took a lot of stick during his life because he was an evangelical. A man who was influential as a man of the Word and has continued in his influence through the many bodies he formed, and caused to be formed through his ministry and life, and still touches life through the many churches he endowed (and still supports through the Simeon's Trust).

Ladies and Gentlemen - I give to you Charles Simeon

A hero, and a brother, of mine

WWI Poets - Geoffrey Studdert Kennedy

One of my heroes - and I think we all need heroes, for they, like Saints, encourage us to live, act and perhaps even die, well - is a priest who became famous by his praying with, and sending over the top, soldiers of the first world war with a New testament and a packet of Woodbines; giving him the nickname 'Woodbine Willie'.

Geoffrey Studdert Kennedy was a man who was many things and it is in his honesty and his poetry that perhaps we find the truth to the lie that war is glorious and denial of the oft vaunted claim that the Church supports war. We (the Church) don't support or promote war, but where conflict is to be found, we are always there (and have always been), the priests (and others) whose engagement in the conflict is that of offering support for (all) the combatants.

Geoffrey Studdert Kennedy is one of those and as the plaque (see April's blog entry on 'Woodbine Willie') in Worcester Cathedral so rightly states, this is a man who was:

A Poet:

A Prophet:

A Passionate Seeker After Truth:

An Ardent Advocate Of Christian Fellowship 

And it is to one of his poems that I turn here:

'COME UNTO ME' (A SHELL-HOLE MEDITATION)
Come unto Me
It sounds like mockery,
A voice that calls a wounded man
Across a weary space
He cannot travel o'er;
For we would come to Thee,
We long to see Thy face,
But we are wounded sore,
And evermore
Our weakness binds us,
Darkness blinds us,
We stretch our hands out vainly toward the shore,
Where Thou art waiting for Thine own.
We groan, and try, and fail again,
We cannot come--we are but men,
Come Thou to us, O Lord.
Come Thou and find us.

Shepherd of the sheep,
We cannot come to Thee.
It is so dark.
But hark,
I hear a voice that sounds across the sea.
"I come."

A man with whom I am proud to say I share both cap badge and calling.

dona eis requiem