Today's PAYG was very thought-provoking for me, asking the listener to identify what (specficilly) possessions they valued and then, after a suitable pause, whether they thought these might still be the same in five years time.

Like a lot of people, I suspect, I trotted off things like photos, Holly Cat (is she a possession?!), my laptop, etc. 

And in five years time...? Will I actually have even looked at the photos - I have hundreds of unsorted prints in drawers waiting for me to do something with them.  Holly Cat - well I hope she's still brightening my life five years from now, but she'll be quite an old lady if she is.  My laptop - will almost certainly have been replaced, it's already nearly five years old as it is!!

What if I look backwards five years... a print of a painting that I treasured having bought it to mark my ordination got lost in transit north and I've never replaced it, so was it not so precious after all?  It's sometimes only when we no longer have things we realise how much, or how little, they actually meant to us.

Where your treasure is, there your heart is also.  If nothing else, I have learned over the years to hold material things more lightly and to treasure relationships and memories more dearly. 

In five year's time... well no-one can guarantee that, so let's be positive and assume it will happen... in five year's time I will be treasuring the moments shared, the ministry and mission exercised, the grace and love of God... and looking forward to the day, by then only ~18 months into the future (10 year follow up in Scotland), when I get am finally discharged by the hospital as NEDy as it gets!  And I expect all those photos will still be in the same drawer waiting to be sorted!

Where is my treasure?  Not, I hope in things per se, but in the loving and laughing, struggling and achieving that is life in all its fulness.

This weekend is one of the contributions the Gathering Place makes to the Glasgow West End Festival - a lovely, gentle, choral communion service for Midsummer.  Always carefully crafted, it gives space for people to realx and be refreshed on the longest Sunday of the year.

It is also a weekend that has personal significance stretching back for my entire ordained ministry, something I wrote about five years ago here the day after a phone call to let me know that I'd been called northwards to begin a new phase of ministry.  Today I tracked down that post and reminded myself of my own story, and the apparent meaningfulness of this solstice time in my story.

It's just as well that when I went to Dibley I had no way of knowing what lay ahead of us, as it was also just as well I had no idea what the future held as I moved north.  But looking back, five years, ten years on it is also good to see how strands of the 'tapestry' weave together to create something precious.

To preside at the Lord's Table is always a privilege, to do so at a time rich in personal symbolism the more so.  I am looking forward to participating in a service created by others as a gift to the weary and worn of our city on the longest, maybe even the hottest, day of the year.

This morning PAYG was using Ecclesiasticus (Sirach) 48: 1 - 11 (that's from the middle bit that's not in most proddy Bibles):

Then Elijah arose, a prophet like fire,
   and his word burned like a torch.
 He brought a famine upon them,
   and by his zeal he made them few in number.
 By the word of the Lord he shut up the heavens,
   and also three times brought down fire.
 How glorious you were, Elijah, in your wondrous deeds!
   Whose glory is equal to yours?
 You raised a corpse from death
   and from Hades, by the word of the Most High.
 You sent kings down to destruction,
   and famous men, from their sickbeds.
 You heard rebuke at Sinai
   and judgements of vengeance at Horeb.
 You anointed kings to inflict retribution,
   and prophets to succeed you.
 You were taken up by a whirlwind of fire,
   in a chariot with horses of fire.
 At the appointed time, it is written, you are destined
   to calm the wrath of God before it breaks out in fury,
to turn the hearts of parents to their children,
   and to restore the tribes of Jacob.
 Happy are those who saw you
   and were adorned with your love!
   For we also shall surely live.

(NRSV from Oremus Bible browser online)

An interiguing summary of the long and complex story of a very human and fallible man.  I found encouraging rather than troubling (as PAYG suggested it to be), reminding me that for all my preoccupation with my stumbles and bumbles, mess ups and 'if only' moments, for all the times I get irritable or stressed and wish I didn't, there is a much bigger story that is part of God's story and it's one that is ultimately good news.

As I sit at my desk this morning working my way through a substantial To Do list (making good progress and enjoying ticking things off the list!) there are council workers making speed bumps (which should surely be called slow bumps) outside in the street.  Given the very short stretch of road with 'give way' lines at either end, it's troubling that someone thinks we need speed bumps... and they are nicely located just a few feet from our side entrance, hey ho.

I can't help feeling there is some kind of metaphor there that I ought to be taking note of... the labour of creating things to ensure that others slow down a bit.  I am always struck by the idea that churches slow down for summer (on the grounds that midweek activities take a break) and the contrast that ministers can find themsleves with an increased workload (which was part of the logic last year for taking my sababtical leave during the summer months)

I am enthusiastic and excited about the things planned for this summer which I really hope will prove a good experience for all involved.  But there do need to be some metaphorical speed bumps, I suspect, to prevent me hurtling along without due care and attention.

Thankfully I can't think of a way to work speed bumps into my services, for which everyone will be hugely grateful!!

I was walking back from the Coffee Club today with one of our folk, through the grounds of a set of four hospitals.  It was glorious weather and all around us were people soaking up the sun as they lunched or waited to visit friends and relatives.  As we walked and chatted a young woman caught up with us, commented on the weather then poured out her story to us... having been bereaved twice in as many years she was on her way to visit a relative having inpatient radiotherapy.  Discovering I was a NED seemed to cheer her, she needed some hopeful stories, and this, it seemed, was one.

Usually after Coffee Club I go to church to work but today was headed home to do a Powerpoint straight onto my laptop as this overcomes mis-matches between versions of the software.  Usually I don't end up in conversation with 'random' people but today I did.  Usually it isn't blistering hot in Glasgow either, but today it is.

It was a privilege, however hackneyed the word, to listen to this young woman's story and to wish her and her relative well.  And maybe, just maybe, somewhere in all of that God was adoing of something or other.  Maybe my friend and I were able to bring a little grace or hope to someone in need of both.