Four O'Clock in the morning (19, December)

That moment when sleep is taken away by a still, small voice, calling your name.

If I was Samuel I’d merely sit up and say, “Speak LORD, your servant is listening,” and that would be that - job’s a good’un!

But I’m not, and the small voice that’s woken me, needing no invitation continues to speak as images flicker before me.

There’s a huddled man, a broken woman standing by, and with, her dying husband. A couple clinging to each other and to life and, in other news, there’s those who grow older and approach that time when the clock stands still and life comes to its end.

There’s newborns vying for attention alongside the long-lived, the foolish and the wise, the well-off and the poor, those sleeping rough around the town; the comfortable, contented Christians, and the sort of believers whose smug services I’ve read that God abhors.

There’s those who count beans and bums on pews and money on the plate.

Those who think they’ve joined a club and as church members put their subs into the plate:They’ve paid to watch the show, have their ears tickled and be told how they are the Church, whilst avoiding looking out of the window!

James begins to mutter something about ‘faith and works’ but fortunately he’s escorted from the building by the Churchwardens in fear that he might be a bad influence on their comfortable existence and the process that get the congregation down to a manageable size.

So I pray and read the word and scribble my thoughts and name the broken, the unhealthy, the ever-increasingly old, and clinging to the cross hear the words: this life was brought to you by the words, “Reconciliation and forgiveness,” and by the numbers One and Free.

This is the stuff of calling.

A God who disturbs our sleep.

A people who cry out for a shepherd to leave the ninety-nine and come and bring them home.

Who weep over the lost and tell the called that they’ve been sent.

What an amazing God we, who know Him and hear the songs he sings over us, are so privileged to call friend, lord and master.

Hallelujah or what?