Still Quarrying - 'Held!'

It has only been four days since I officially retired but already people are asking me how it feels.  That is not easy to say since time is being filled with preparations for the Big Move.  There has not been a lot of opportunity for reflection.   But you take for granted that this will be one feature of the days ahead: more time for reflection.  And then there are the  things people have been suggesting to me:  more time for the family,  opportunity too enjoy a slower pace of life, writing that book that many seem to think is bursting to get out.   The thing is, I am tentative about making too many plans.  I cannot help thinking about colleagues who were not given much of a retirement before they were overwhelmed by what George Mackay Brown called ‘death’s slow weatherings and sudden bolts’.  Plans were made, projects started, the future seemingly brimmed with new opportunity,  but the shadow fell.  

There is a voice within telling me that I should not be thinking this way but reality has to be faced.  Jesus once told a story about a man whose elaborate plans for retirement were scarcely made before the curtain was brought down on his life.  (Luke 12: 16-21).  And  I suppose living with long-term cancer tends to colour your perspective.  

This is not to say that plans should never be made but in facing the future your priority has always to be the God who promises to be with His people in every circumstance and no matter how deep the darkness promises to be working out His good and loving purpose.  His plans may be different.  This is where faith is given an opportunity.  Faith in the God who is revealed in the experience of the ancient people of Israel and supremely in the ministry of Jesus.  Faith that is expressed in Scripture in deeply personal terms.  

There is a song which says:

‘Put your hand in the hand of the man who stilled the water

 Put your hand in the hand of the man who calmed the sea.’

This sort of thing does not appeal to everyone, tends to engender a spiritual queasiness.   But you do not go far in Scripture to find faith expressed in such terms.  The Psalms reflect the worst of human experiences: persecution, disease, unbearable pain, depression, fear of death.  In Psalm 73 there is a reflection of a time of deep spiritual darkness when the Psalmist’s heart ‘was grieved and my spirit embittered.’  (v. 21).   Yet faith survives:

‘Yet I am always with you ;

 you hold me by my right hand.’  

 You guide me with your counsel,

 and afterwards you will take me into glory.’  (Vv. 23-24.)

This is what Eugene Petersen describes as ‘earthy spirituality’, recognising the brokenness of human existence and how it stretches all our inner resources but still believing that God is in the midst as our Companion, directing us forward according to His good and loving purpose.  The supreme assurance of this is in the life and ministry of Jesus.  We need to reflect more on John 1: 14: ‘The Word became flesh and lived amongst us.’  Flesh with all its frailties, physical, psychological and spiritual.  So we can face the future with confidence that whoever circumstances fall to us God is present holding us by the hand.  

Psalm 73 ends with one of the most complete statements of faith in Scripture:

‘My flesh and my heart may fail,

 But God is the strength of my heart and my portion for ever.’  (v. 26.)

The plans will formulate I have no doubt.  But more than anything else I pray that this faith will dominate.  

Retirement Looming

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It's been a while since my last blog but you don't want to hear about  a number of excuses.  I thought however, that it would be good to let you see the substance of my penultimate  pastoral letter in the Church magazine.   Here goes:

In the big clear-out I came across the notes I made for the first sermon I preached in a service.  I think I was seventeen at the time.  The Youth Fellowship had been given the opportunity to lead evening worship.  Afterwards people were encouraging and there then began a dawning that this was what I was meant to do.  Shadows were to fall in the years ahead.  Uncertainty, disillusionment, doubt, perhaps even resistance.  But the call was strong and eventually I came to the place where I could not imagine a fulfilled life apart from the Ministry of Word and Sacrament. 

 

People around me expressed doubts.  Was this really what I wanted to do?  But I had enough insight and experience to know that God did not call a ‘type’.  In fact, in the early 1970s when I entered a fuller Christian commitment people were emerging as preachers and evangelists who in style and presentation were a long way from what had come to be seen as the norm.  When I saw Nigel Goodwin standing in the pulpit of St George’s Tron in his floral shirt and knee length purple suede boots, I began to think that maybe I could fit in!  In then end you accept that God knew what he was doing when He put this pressure on your will.

 

It has never been anything less that than challenging.  When I was inducted to Stevenston: Ardeer a senior minister gave the ‘charges’ at the Service of Induction.  He was generally encouraging but he said that in the end there was one thing I could be sure of: ‘You’ll never win!’   I had enough experience of Church life to know what he meant but as I face the prospect of retirement the sense of incompleteness, even failure, is far outweighed by the privilege of having the opportunity to serve as a parish minister.  To be with people in their most heart-breaking and vulnerable times is never easy but it has been an inspiration to see God’s people finding a way forward in the promises of Christ.  This is not to mention days of celebration when Gabrielle and I have been included as part of the family.  Baptisms and marriages come with a sense of new hope and ministers experience this more than most.  

 

It all comes together to make a final parting very hard.  Especially at this time in the Church of Scotland when the future of many congregations is in doubt.  It would be less than honest to say this does not weigh heavily on me.  But as there was a sense of beginning all those years ago so there comes a sense of major change.  I can’t bring myself to say, ‘the end’.  I am not convinced that 25 September will see the end of ministry for me.  I continue to hope and pray that I will have the health and strength to be available to serve in some capacity however limited.  Whatever else has to be set aside I’ll be holding on to a couple of clerical collars.  And maybe the blogs will be more frequent!

 

‘You’ll never win,’ he said.  Well, we don’t in this life.  Not completely.  But Paul said: ‘I press on towards the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenwards in Christ Jesus.’ (Philippians 3: 14). Whatever the future holds for us we are united in this faith that we are part of the Great Project to bring heaven and earth together, a renewed creation in which God’s people see the fulfilment of all His promises.  Nothing more to cry over and greater opportunities for service.  

 

Yours pressing on,  

Fergus.