Still Quarrying: New Home, New Study.

We were not at all sure that the removal men would manage to get my desk up a narrow winding stair and into the space that is my new study.  But without a scratch or a bump or any noticeable extra effort it was in and placed just where I wanted it.  A lot of stuff had to be given away or junked prior to the removal, some of it with regret.  But I wanted my desk.  It was surplus to requirements at Ibrox Parish Church where I was Student Assistant  from 1978 until 1980 and when it was offered I responded with covetous haste.   I remember lugging it across Paisley Road West to the flat we were renting on Copland Road with a little help from a friend and not counting the cost in energy or what passing citizens might have been thinking.

So it’s be with me a long time this desk.  Through student days, Cathedral days, Ardeer days, Milngavie days and now installed and ready for Renfrew days.   I was showing a retired colleague round the new house and proudly opened the door to the new study.  ‘Why do you need it?’ he said.   There’s nothing like a good pal to deflate you.  But I suppose it’s a good question.  I mean, I’m retired.  But I’ve just got so used to a place where I can focus on God’s Word and seek to learn from the written wisdom of Christian men and women down through the centuries.   And I don’t like to think that my preaching days are over.  I’m praying that health and treatment allowing I might be available to colleagues who need an old guy to come off the bench and give them a break.  

When we first came to Milngavie I was showing a friend round the Manse and eventually came to the study.  He said: ‘So this is where it all happens.’   I’ve never forgotten that.  Preaching needs work and sometimes it is hard but along with that something needs to happen.  There has to be a meaningful connection with the truth beneath the text of the Bible and that is the work of the Holy Spirit.  That needs to happen.  And it doesn’t end there.  After the quarrying comes the delivery to be done no matter how the preacher is feeling, no matter how low he may be within himself, no matter the temperature of his faith and what burdens he may be carrying - and for that something needs to happen.   The Spirit needs to take what has been revealed in the study to the minds and hearts of God’s people.  

The apostle Paul was conscious of this.  Towards the end of his letter to the Ephesians he made this plea to God’s people:

‘Pray also for me, that whenever I open my mouth, words may be given me so that I may fearlessly make known the mystery of the gospel . . .’  

Paul may have been one of the foremost intellectuals of his day but he recognised that if he was to truly preach, something needed to be given, something needed to happen.  It wasn’t just one person ‘six feet above contradiction’ as preaching has been described.  It is a communal event.  Preacher, people and the Spirit.   And there is nothing like that experience.   E.M. Bounds wrote in 1890:

‘The preacher’s vocation will not end while a single soul remains to be ripened for heaven or while warfare against sin is to be waged.  Not till the angel, with one foot on sea and one on land, with uplifted hand and oath, arrests time and dissolves it into eternity, shall the preacher’s vocation end, his commission be cancelled.  Preaching can have no substitute or rivals; to discount or retire it is to discount and retire God.’  

With that vision before me I’m praying that the old desk will see the beginnings of future service for the Kingdom.