Today I sat down and emailed my deacons my annual leave intentions for this year.  As I won't use the last of last year's until April (only 2 days) it has given me rather inflated pleasure to book a three week block in August!  This will consist of two weeks walking Offa's Dyke followed by almost a week at a theology conference in Manchester.  Whether this is sublime to ridiculous or vice versa only time will tell.  What is rather nice is that the two are linked by a preach at my 'sending' church in dear old Warrington.

I also fixed my week's study leave in early April (before the last of last year's annual leave!) and am all set to spend five days away from it all at St Deniol's library in Wales.  Not a rest, as I have not one but two conference papers to prepare in a decent draft form (not least as the university needs a draft to be presented a week or so later!) but it will be a total break from the stresses of dear old Dibley.

Thus I am feeling fairly cheerful tonight, and looking forward to lots of lovely varied time away, refreshing body, mind and spirit.  Bliss!

Such is the title for the Women's World Day of Prayer for which I have to preach on Friday.  I am not over enamoured with the material I've been supplied with which seems too simplistic to me.  I have a bit of an idea rumbling around my brain, but I'm not sure whether it will work with a group of mainly older women , so I thought I'd dump it here instead!

One of the best things I was every taught in respect of preaching was based on a Barth idea of

WORD

Word

word

Where WORD refers to Christ, the Logos, the word-made-flesh; Word is the Bible, the scriptures; word is the thing the preacher speaks, shares, tells forth.

So how about a parallel for wisdom?

WISDOM

Wisdom

wisdom

Where WISDOM refers to the Holy Spirit, Sophia, the Wisdom-of-God; Wisdom is again the Bible, the scriptures, the inspired account of faith; wisdom is the thing that arises in humans as they acquire new understanding.

The two stories I have to work with - Job and Luke's Mary & Martha seem to me to represent three situations in which God's Sophia brings wisdom...

For Job there is a new perspective on questions of suffering, not answers but an awareness that God has not abandoned him.  I have to admit I don't find Job easy to work with because he has a happy ending and real people in real situations very often don't.  But even so, I think I can say God's Sophia can transform our views from within suffering, not to fatalistic acceptance but to the assurance of God-with-us.

For Mary there is excitement and desire to be at Jesus' feet.  Something prompts her to do this, because we don't actually know that she was a dreamer or a lazy little sister!  Something about God's Sophia moving us to new encounters and new possibilities.

For Martha there is just daily routine made worse by all these blokes arriving!  She questions Jesus (brave woman!) and is prompted to think again about her priorities.  From the Johannine accounts it is clear that her perspective does move on.  Even the everyday can be transformed by God's Sophia.

And this, I think, is where I want to go with these women - that no matter what life is like, God's Wisdom brings new Understanding - new ideas, new perspectives, new hope, new practices, new dreams, new attitudes.  We might not get the answers we long for, but God who is present as Spirit can and does offer hope and a future.

Does that make any sense?  Is it total heresy?  Who thought of it before me?  And will the good ladies of the church south of Leicester get it?