BPW 139

Come, thou long-expected Jesus,
Born to set thy people free,
 From our fears and sins release us,
Let us find our rest in thee.

Israel's strength and consolation,
Hope of all the earth thou art;
Dear desire of every nation,
 Joy of every longing heart.

Born thy people to deliver,
 Born a child and yet a king,
Born to reign in us for ever,
Now thy gracious kingdom bring.

By thine own eternal Spirit
Rule in all our hearts alone;
 By thine all-sufficient merit
Raise us to thy glorious throne.

Charles Wesley (1707-1788)

Each year I challenge myself to some kind of daily blogging challenge for Advent... last year it was poems from a book I was reading.  This year I thought I'd make up my own scheme, beginning with the hymns in the Advent section of BPW (Numbers 139 to 149) in numerical order, and then adding on others from Advent selection in HymnQuest.  This won't make for a tidy journey, but I think it will be an interesting experiment.

Hard to believe that a year has flown by since the tragedy of a police helicopter crashing into this Glasgow pub on the banks of the Clyde... the date anniversary is tomorrow, the equivalent day today.

Like all tragedies, there was a huge flurry of activity at the time, and then the media circus moved on, people went back to their everyday lives and the broken building waited silently, as it is still does, to discover its future.

There was a lot of talk about this or that event to raise money to restore it, and I have no idea how much of that actually came to pass.

Last Sunday I took this photo as I passed... a queue of cars waiting at the lights, a clear blue sky, people wandering along the road going about there ordinary Sunday lives.  A year on and normality has returned... except for the families of those who lost their lives, or who are emotionally scarred by their experiences... and for those whose livelihoods were wiped out along with the roof.

Black Friday?  Well, for so many here last year it really was a black day... I hope an dpray that this year will for all of them be just a bit brighter

This morning I wanted to look something up in a book I bought for £1 in the SCM sale when I was a student almost 15 years ago.  I wasn't sure, but I thought it had an orange cover, so I looked at the orange books in the right part of the bookcase before scanning along the shelves without success.  So I looked it up on the web, found a photo of the cover, discovered it was blue, and now on sale at £15 or thereabouts.  With this new information I quickly located the book, found the chapter I was after and read some stuff that will be helpful for my sermon on Sunday.

Not sure that's quite what the web was meant for, but it's useful!

Yesterday someone dropped into conversation the observation that "it is hoped that we will all wear night caps for the Sunday School nativity..." a simple enough thing to say, surely no loading in that?  But it made my blood run cold... at the back of a cupboard I still have a couple of "sleep caps" that date back to my chemo time, and the very thought of choosing to wear such a garment unexpectedly made me shudder inwardly.  I mooted the possiblity of a santa hat, but this was, not unreasonably, deemed unsuitable.  So, today I ordered a 'fancy dress' night cap that looks more like a santa hat (in different colours) than anything I might wear to bed, and will join in happily enough come the day.

But it gave me pause for thought about the power of things we thought were long gone and forgotten about to brought to mind by totally innocuous remarks.

It wasn't a big thing, and I knew it was just some fleeting association that was almost devoid of power, but it was very unexpected, and it's that, I think, that has stayed with me... Who'd have thought the phrase "night cap" could  possibly contain any power?  I wonder what words, phrases, songs, prayers, stories etc I use that touch raw nerves for others?  And would I ever know?  And how would I find the right balance?