One Life

Something has always fascinated me about words. There are times when they seem so, well, useless; when they are awkward or shallow or empty compared to what we really want to express. And yet we have to use them anyway.

And that’s a little like how I feel now. I feel like God did something significant in me over the YLC in Falmouth, but I’m struggling to find words for what exactly He did. He was good, wonderfully good. And that’s about the best I can do.

So in the absence of suitable words, what you need is something you can get hold of. Get your hands on, since your mouth won’t work. For me, it was something that these heroes, Gary and Bev Killingsworth, said in one of their seminars. They mentioned that verse in James about being doers of the word, not merely hearers, and made the point that we know a lot of the Bible, but do much less. What we need is to do more, not hear more.

For example, loving your neighbour – something that I know but do not do. Not intentionally, anyway. When was the last time I prayed about loving my neighbour, or went out of my way to do it? I’ve realised that first on that famous list in Corinthians is ‘love is patient.’ This basically means that most of the time I fall at the first hurdle. So this is my task: when my heart is still too full to make sense, I will try to love my neighbour. I will just try to be patient. That’s about as simple as it gets, but right now simple is best.

I can only hope that my amateur attempts will please my Father – or at least amuse Him.

There are some things that you keep putting off because you don’t think you can do it, or probably because you don’t want to. That’s what I’m doing now.

Yes, I’m supposed to be working on something else, but it was getting nowhere, and I got fed up with just sitting and watching my computer screen in its depressingly inactive state. So I thought I would do something useful.

Sometimes it takes a lot of discipline to do a simple task. When something is exciting, new or even difficult, we jump for it – anything but the mundane, right? Leave the dull stuff for later. Or when it seems too hard – which is my particular problem this morning. We become experts at putting things off. And most of the time it’s okay, provided we actually do it in the end. The problem comes when we don’t.

So I set you (and myself) a challenge. Do something today that you have been putting off. Just get it done. Imagine the sigh of relief afterwards – most likely it will not be as bad as you thought. And if it is, you have my sympathy.

So off I go. Bring it on, as they say.

According to the clock next to my bed, it’s been ten to twelve for the past two weeks. For reasons unknown, the second hand ticks away, making that lovely time-is-passing sound, but the time never changes. While this has caused a couple of frantic moments (before I realised that it couldn’t possibly be that late already,) I keep the clock there. Something about it makes me feel, well, thankful.

Let me explain.

I find it remarkable that it’s nearly June already. During school, time seemed to crawl, especially in those science lessons when even the grey clouds out the dirty window were more interesting than the work in front of you. Summer felt like the promised land, and you sat around for forty years waiting for it. Now I suppose that this is no original realisation, but having finished school, time has apparently sped up. Suddenly weeks feel like days instead of months. In one sense, this frightens me. I don’t like to think how little time I have left here or how close uni is.

And seeing that clock, so sadly deluded yet defiantly sure of itself, reminds me that however we feel and despite what we think, time has its own pace that doesn’t change. It will march on at the rate of 60 minutes per hour, and there’s nothing I, or my poor clock, can do about it. Time is not mine – which is a relief.

I imagine that an understanding of time has got to be high up there on the ‘must-have’ list of a good leader. I’m sure in the years to come I’ll understand it better, maybe after a few decades. At the moment I have little more understanding than my clock. But for now, I will use time the best that I can. And I will not let it frighten me.

This Saturday I learnt a lesson: it is not impossible to be learn something from a 12 year old boy.

I was hanging out with some guys in Portsmouth – five of them in a little church in Southsea – and they were far from my expectations, which were, to be honest, based on the behaviour of most 11 and 12-year-old lads.

Here was my favourite comment: and it speaks for itself. We were talking about mission, and they were getting totally excited about vision and actually doing something. They were thinking what might be in a vision statement, and one lad, who hadn’t said anything yet, pipes up:

‘There should be something in there that says that we’re proud of God.’

Oh, what a comment! These guys are talking about what they could do to engage their friends, to build community, and how they could show that they are proud of their God. And I have to say, the eyes got a little misty!

But that’s it, isn’t it? Deep down, we should be proud of our God. Up front, we should be proud of our God. Through and through, we should proud of our incredible, remarkable and surprising God.

And that is what a 12 year old lad taught me.

If you’re anything like me, the world outside has been far more appealing than the world inside these last few weeks. As exciting as my office is, (absolutely no sarcasm intended!), it doesn’t nearly compare with a field or the woods or the river when the sun’s shining!

The world really is a beautiful place. And as I’ve been wandering and wondering in the woods, I’ve come to really love trees. They are, quite simply, remarkable.

There is something wonderfully consistent about trees that inspires me. Consider a tree as a worshipper: year in, year out, month after month, season following season, it stands there in adoration. It is unmovable. The trees I walked through this morning have seen decades of change – people probably walked there in the 60s, 50s, maybe even through the world wars. And those trees are just as sure of the glory of God now as they were then. They are unswerving in their worship.

And yet change is part of their lives. They are always changing – if they do not change, they die. They just seem to know what needs to change and what doesn’t.

So here’s the result of my ponderings. I want to be like a tree. I want my leadership to be always and unchangeably about the glory of God. If God lets me, I want to stand across the decades, not just the weeks and months. I want to learn how to live in the different seasons of life – when it’s gloriously sunny and when it’s freaking freezing. And I want to inspire those who walk by me...not by flashy words or even inspiring actions, but by simply, well, standing there.