Just as I have a lovely week, other people do not.  I was reminded of this poem/prayer someone sent me about a decade ago, maybe it will help someone, somehow...

Even as we seem to be dying

In weakness,

In fear,

Overwhelmed by all the force against us,

There are moments when we know

That we will never be determined

By any of that.

There is a God

Who says to us

Weep strongly,

Be strongly afraid,

Care strongly,

Choose life strongly in faith,

And I will live strongly

In all of that.

There is a God

Who moves from hill to mountain top,

Who stands high in the depths of the pit,

Who gasps free of the waters of drowning

And plants the cross-shaped tree

On the very shaking ground on which we stand

As tough our trembling earth is like a rock.

There is a God

Who steps free

Of the binding chains around our souls

And calls us in a voice

Which always knows our name,

Who always feels our pain,

Who lifts our feet

As through our life

Stands cupped in a saving hand

And cherished forever in a life-filled place.

Dorothy McRae McMahon in Liturgies for the Journey of Life,SPCK, 2000, p 124

For me, this has been a very happy week.  Having changed my work pattern just a bit, and having worked out how to make the best use of odd pockets of time on days when I need to be elsewhere, I am feeling very energised and upbeat, despite having worked two very long days and a total that would exceed the EU working hours directive, if it applied.  The fatigue and lethargy that had built steadily since September seems to have evaporated.  Amazing the difference a few tweaks can make.

The grand plan is that I will finish work early on Fridays, which feels like an unexpected bonus!  The challenge is to find good thing to do with that time so that I don't just fritter it away with meaningless activities or end up working because, after all there is always more that I could do.

So today it will be lunch in a local cafe and then head home to do some piano practice (one of my self-imposed challenges for this year!  If I get one session a week that'll do me!!)

I had a rather bewildering conversation today.  Someone observed that they felt we should not use green as a colour for the drapes that denote the 'focus' for worship, or the table cloth for non-communion weeks, even though it is the 'right' liturgical colour for 'ordinary time'.  I think I would have been less puzzled had there been a general objection to liturgical colours being used in a protestant non-conformist church, but no, this objection was only about the use of green; purple, red and gold, which we use in appropriate season, were, it seems fine.

There are oodles of (well, several anyway) schemes of liturgical colours, but I have not found anything that can tell me how they were originally selected.  The only clue I've found is that green is sometimes associated with 'growth'.

So do any of my readers have any light to shed on the matter?  It would be helpful in explaining to this person why green might have been chosen in the first place.

Today has been busy, in a very good way, but that means I have not given any thought to anything I might write here, and I still have a meeting to take place for which I have not yet prepared any devotions.

So far so good with the new work pattern, even if this week it does mean two very long days either side of my rest day (yesterday, which was mainly spent blitzing my spare room, actaully half-blitizing it as it was far worse than I thought!).

For the first time in ages, I've a half decent draught of my sermon done with enough time to review it over the next couple of days.  This feels amazingly positive.  Hopefully it also means the sermon will end up a bit better than the last few!!

Yesterday a request landed in my inbox for input to an upcoming, local prayer event.  I try to support these as I think they are important, though along with a lot of people groan at the potential for one-up-church(hu)man-ship that arises with the 'two items for praise and thanks'.

This time as well as the usual, laudable if flawed, request for two items of praise/thanks and two for prayer came two others.  The first of these was 'one item of unanswered prayer.'  I'm afraid I saw red at this point, as it reflects a theology that, at its berst, reduces God to a benevolent genie who will grant boons to the faithful; and at worst to a capricious puppeteer who merely dallies with her creatures (see I can have a bad feminine deity, I'm not biased ;0) ).  Way back in Sunday school I was told there were three answers to prayer, 'yes,' 'no,' and 'wait.'  It is maybe simplistic, but I have a sneaky suspicion it's better theology than the alternative.  Anyway, why reply was that I didn't believe in unanswered prayer, just prayers that failed to accord with God's will, and we didn't have any.  Or words to that effect but a tad more gracious.  This morning I saw this picture on a social network site, and it seemed to connect:

The other thing we are asked to do was to identify one thing God is teaching our church just now.  I wrote something about the patience and challenge needed to exercise a prophetic witness.  I think that was an OK answer.  What I wish I had written was something like "I love you with an everlasting love" or "Nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus" or "The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases, God's mercy never ends, eveery day they are fully renewed, such if God's faithfulness".  AH well.

I know all the questions are well meant, and I am not meaning to disrepsect the person or church who drew up the list.  Just wish we actually were a bit more clued up about what prayer is not!