Still Quarrying: I Don't Like Wednesdays!

It’s very much an oldie now but you still hear people humming, whistling, mumbling the Boomtown Rats song: ‘I Don’t Like Mondays.’  Bob Geldof wrote it after hearing about a shooting in an elementary school in San Diego USA.  A sixteen-year-old woman, Brenda Anne Spencer, fired at children in the school playground killing two adults and injuring eight children and one police officer.   Her explanation for her crime was: ‘I don’t like Mondays.  This livens up the day.’  

 

No one would want to endorse such an extreme and horrific reaction but if we take the title of the song, it captures what many of us feel.  That’s why people still hum it, whistle it, and mumble it.    After a pleasant weekend it’s back to work, school, college and sometimes that involves a big psychological push.  For me, Monday is the day when I receive chemotherapy at the Beatson which also involves taking steroids.  I’m left a bit wobbly and that continues into Tuesday.  It’s on Wednesday that I experience the crash.  I’m told it has to do with the steroids.  They give you a bit of a lift and then let you down, sometimes quite dramatically.   So, for me it’s not Mondays that are the problem, it’s Wednesdays.  I don’t like them.  

 

It's not easy to describe what it’s like.  The nearest I can get to it is ‘Space Dust’.  If you are of my generation, you may remember it from the penny tray in the sweetie shop.  You could say it was a more dynamic version of sherbet.  When it went into your mouth it sparked and fizzed and bubbled, and all in all it was good fun.  The more exhibitionist among us kept our mouths open when the sparking and fizzing and bubbling was going on.  Well, it’s good to share the best of yourself.  Wednesday is like having Space Dust sprinkled on my brain and it’s not such good fun.  You feel you are not part of this world, you slow down, concentration is low, you sometimes have to think carefully before you speak.  

 

I don’t like Wednesdays, but they are opportunities to focus on Paul’s vision of contentment:

 

‘ . . . I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances.  I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty.  I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want.  I can do all this through him who gives me strength.’  (Philippians 4: 11-13).’  

 

So how do we take this forward?  It’s not just about relaxation techniques and trying to be calm.  It’s not just about gritting your teeth and being determined that you will not be overwhelmed by this experience.  It’s not even about focussing on your favourite Bible verses – although of the three options opened up here that is obviously the best.  What is needed is the conviction that no matter how you may feel the God revealed in the Scriptures and supremely in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus is present in the midst of the Space Dust.  It’s a challenge.  But to say anything else is to say there are some areas of life that God has abandoned.  That there are some areas of life that are too dark, too painful, too perplexing for Him to dwell in.  

 

A seventeenth century frier Brother Lawrence wrote a devotional book called The Practice Of The Presence Of God which has at its heart the conviction that we are never out of the presence of God whether engaged in the most menial tasks or struggling to make sense of the darkest circumstances.  God is present.  Nothing will ever separate us from His love.  His good purpose for His people will never be sabotaged by the worst of times.  We need to pray out of this conviction even when it doesn’t feel true.

 

Many years ago, a friend of mine told me that he wasn’t convinced that you can pray anywhere and at any time.  You need time set apart, and a special place.   Certainly, you can point to Jesus and His frequent ‘drawing apart’, to be alone with His heavenly Father.  But He also prayed on the cross when He no longer felt the presence of God and considered Himself abandoned.  He continued to practice the Presence when to paraphrase the hymn he felt the Father had turned His face away.  

 

It is this perseverance with the God revealed to us in Scripture and in the life and ministry of Jesus that opens us up to the strength experienced by Paul and leads us to that contentment that can be hours even in the days we don’t like.  

Still Quarrying: 'The Perfect Golden Circle.'

 It’s always good to discover new writers and even more so when they have something to offer.  This one came with no personal recommendation but was a pick-up in the local library.  It was the unusual story that grabbed me.  In 1989 England two friends set out in a rundown campervan to create crop-circles, so intricate that they are soon attracting not merely national but international attention.  

 

Along the way the connection with mankind and the ‘land’ is explored along with commercialisation, the power of money and status, the mystery and power of art.  Sounds a bit heavy when I put it down like that, but the writing has a light touch, and the most engaging aspect of the book is the two main characters Calvert and Redbone.  

 

Calvert is an ex-SAS Falklands veteran and is carrying many traumatic experiences.  It is never stated but regular flashbacks would indicate Post-            Traumatic Stress Syndrome.  For him the creation of crop circles - the organisation, the purpose, the achievement - is therapy.  

 

Redbone is an aging punk band member who receives mystical visions and has a strong connection to the ‘land’, to the ancient people who lived on it and the wisdom that guided them.  He lives in a campervan.  

 

An unlikely couple.  We never learn how they met but there is a deep friendship which in the main does not require too much conversation to survive the demands of their work and their sometime disappointments and setbacks.  Not much good stuff is written about male-friendship but this falls into that category. 

 

It’s difficult to go into the plot too much. I’m sensitive to throwing out too many ‘spoilers'. But along the way there are challenges human, technological and personal that threaten to throw them off course.  At one point Calvert and Redbone have a discussion about ‘the perfect golden circle’.  Redbone doubts it could ever exist: ‘I don’t believe anything man-made can ever be perfect.'  Even if a machine is employed to make the perfect golden circle will incorporate man’s imperfection at some level.  In the end Redbone concedes, reluctantly, that the perfect golden circle still exists in our minds.  And it is this which in the end drives forward their Great Project.  

 

In there is an acknowledgement in the two men that they are being driven by ‘something’ outside themselves.  Redbone is influenced by Buddhist and Hindu thought, Calvert driven by the power of ‘truth and beauty.’  How it all works out in the end is deeply moving. And reminds Christians that there many discussions out there with broken but commendable people in which to engage. 

Still Quarrying: From Pulpit To Pew.

 In retirement there have been new things to get used to.  House, community, relationships.  Chief among the new things for me, however, is my role in the Church,  not leading from the front on the Lord’s Day but sitting in a pew.  This I have been doing now for the last eight months.  It hasn’t been as great a challenge as you might think.  Our parish Church, ten minutes’ walk away, is blessed by a warm, welcoming congregation and a minister who is committed to the preached Word.  Still, I have missed the preparation for preaching and the privilege of delivering it to God’s people.  My continuing cancer treatment can leave me debilitated in body and mind and just not fit to engage with the task of preaching at the previous level.    But it would be odd indeed to see that diminish from your life and not feel the difference.   Paul tried to imagine what it would be like not to preach.  He cried:

 

‘ . . . when I preach the gospel I cannot boast, since I am compelled to preach.  Woe to me if I do not preach the gospel.’  (I Corinthians 9: 16). 

 

The circumstances are different but at the heart of these words is a realisation that the task of preaching is part of Paul’s very being, that he has been commissioned by God to deliver the Gospel, and not to do so leaves him unfulfilled and, indeed, under judgement.   This is a realisation that every preacher shares with the apostle and it is not easy to face the fact that preaching is no longer as central to your life as it once was.  

 

But this leads me to reflect on something that Eric Alexander once wrote:  

 

‘The man I am is more important to God than the work I do.  The secret of failure is often failure in secret.  Resist professionalism in the ministry: be yourself.’  

 

I may state that preaching is a priority, a privilege, and the great fulfilment of my life but my life being completely open to God,  what is God’s supreme purpose with me?  It is to see Christ reflected in my life.  And perhaps that is the great lesson of these pew-filling years.  No longer having the status of ‘the minister’ delivering the Word, what impact is the preached Word having on my life?

 

Confession time.  There are passages in Scripture that when I come across them in my personal devotions something within me says: ‘Not this again!’  We’ve been over this time and time again and is there anything else to be squeezed out of it?  The Parable of the Sower is an example.  But there is a sense that there is no more important passage in the whole of the Gospels.  The fact that it appears in Matthew, Mark and Luke would seem to underline this.  And the strange thing is that at the heart of this story is how much is wasted in the preaching of the Gospel.  We are told about a farmer who sows seed which falls on a path, among rocks and in competition with weeds.  Only a percentage falls among ‘good soil’ and yields a crop.   What we normally miss is what Jesus says in in Luke 8: 16-18 after he has told the story:

 

'No one lights a lamp and hides it in a clay jar or puts it under a bed.  Instead, they put it on a stand, so that those who come in can see the light.  For there is nothing hidden that will not be disclosed, and nothing concealed that will not be known or brought out into the open.  Therefore consider carefully how you listen.  Whoever has will be given more; whoever does not have , even what they think they have will be taken from them.'  

We live open lives before God.  Nothing is hidden.  So how do we look?  That’s the challenge and Jesus warns us that the key to spiritual growth is to heed the call ‘to consider carefully how we listen.’   It is important to hear and understand but it doesn’t stop there.  How much that we hear is applied to out lives and becomes part of our spiritual DNA?  Jesus unpacks the ‘good soil’:

 

‘ . . . the seed on good soil stands for those with a noble and good heart, who hear the word, retain it, and by persevering produce a crop.’  (Luke 8: 15.)

 

If this sounds like a dig at those who fill the pews, remember I am one of them now!  Moreover, while we listeners have a responsibility as we leave Church on the Lord’s Day to consider how we will respond to the preached Word, spare a prayer for those who have been preparing for preaching and tasked with delivering it to God’s people.  They have been ‘listening’ with mind and heart to the truth which alone will facilitate the growth of the Kingdom.  They are called to deliver that truth to God’s people on dependence in the Holy Spirit.  Often, we do not appreciate the responsibility involved in this and the accountability that hovers over every preacher.  A colleague tells me that he is embarking on preaching series in the Letter of James.  Sooner or later, he will bump up against these words:

 

‘Not many of you should become teachers, my fellow believers, because you know that we who teach will be judged more strictly.’   (James 3: 1)

 

If anything should convince us of the responsibility and accountability attached to preaching it is this.  The truths revealed in Scripture are vital to the growth of the Kingdom on earth and can never be undermined by carelessness, superficiality, or self-serving interpretation.  All of which are temptations to the preacher and must be resisted.  The preacher may well wonder on descending the pulpit: ‘Did they get the message?’   Of equal importance for the preacher on ascending the pulpit is to ask: ‘Have I got the message?’  

 

That became important for me once again last Sunday when I preached at an evening service in Renfrew Trinity.  First time in eight months!  It felt good and I am grateful to my minister, Stuart Steell, for the opportunity.  But more than my satisfaction is how the preaching was received in eternity.  Did the angels rejoice in the Word that sustains and brings growth to the Kingdom?