Yesterday it turned colder in Glasgow.  The evening rain froze leaving cars with an unexpected sheen, and drivers forced to scrape the windows, unelss they were fortunate enough to have heated ones.  Then overnight the snow came...

Before light dawned, a view from my window.

Winter is surely here.

This morning our theme will be 'prophets and discoverers' (or in David Adam language, 'visionaries and discoverers') and we will read of Isaiah (from the NT) and Elijah (from the OT).  The link to peace gets a bit tenuous, so I won't be forcing it, though it strikes me, as I type that Nobel was so discomfited by the outworking of one of his discoveries that he instigated the famous prizes awarded for 'peaceful' or at least 'peaceable' works.

Peace is a bit of a 'slippery' concept, easier to say what it is not that what it is; sometimes only a via negativa captures what we try to express:

Peace,

Not merely absence of war

Not simply silence after shouting

Not a moment of stillness

Not relaxation after business

Not warm fuzzies deep inside

Not...

Peace

The je ne sait quoi that defies comprehension

That sneaks, unbidden, into hearts and minds

The sense that 'all will be well' despite all odds

That fear has evaporated

Hatred subsumed by love

Anger dispelled by forgiveness

Peace...

Undefinable

Unattainable?

Glimpsed in a newborn laid in a cattle trough

Won through the desolation of Roman execution

Confusing concept

For which we yearn...

Peace

May we discover fresh glimpses of it this Adventide

News reached me yesterday evening that another of the people I came to know and love in Dibley has died after a short illness, bringing to an end an era within that little church.  Sadly his wife is also quite unwell at the moment, and in recent days the two were in separate hospital wards (possibly separate hospitals, I'm not sure).

This former Sunday School superintendent (long before my time!) was also a member of the Magic Circle and had, until not that many years ago, regularly performed his tricks at church socials.  I recall him telling me that at the time he asked his wife to marry him, coming to his church (she had been a Methodist) and accepting his membership of the Magic Circle were non-negotiable!

The first year I was at Dibley, for the evening service on harvest festival, I invited people to bring along something that symbolised their own 'harvest' and to be willing to explain it.  Sadly, I didn't explain myself well enough, and a lot of what came were artifacts from decades past rather than recent activity.  This man brought his Magic Circle certificate and explained that 'to see the smile on the face of a child' was what it was about for him.

I never saw him perform his conjuring tricks, by the time I arrived his fingers were already too stiff and his mind beginning to slow down, but there will be many who look back fondly on the days when his prestidigitation entertained and amazed them.

RIP RC, go now to your eternal rest.

So, this is a REAL cold, a proper keep-you-awake-cos-you-can't-breath and/or your-nose-drips-like-a-tap kind of a cold.  Way back when, in the days I had a real job, one of my colleagues used to take great delight in me getting colds, as I always had a red nose, rheumy eyes and sometimes a husky/gravelly/lost voice... and was nicknamed Rudolph for a few days.

Hurrah for Beecham's powders, mixed with orange juice, honey and hot water, which stave off the worst of the acute-rhino-virus symptoms quite well.

An enjoyable day in prospect - and hopefully an hour's leaping about will drive out the little monsters that are hiding in my bloodstream - but definitely Rudolph the Red-nosed Preacher for tomorrow.

Today's readings...

Psalm 22: 6 - 7

Exodus 4:2 - 3a

Matthew 26: 6 - 13

To be honest, reading these verses once, twice, three times, I struggled to find anything that spoke to me about hope... the words from the psalm are full of despair ("I am a worm"), the words from Exodus, quite frankly, meaningless out of their wider context, the story from Matthew very well known and well loved but 'the poor will always be with you...' 

So, I have decided not to force the issue.  To accept that sometimes what is needed is permission to express hope-less-ness.  "I am a worm and not a person"  I am useless... I am worthless... I am a failure... whatever it might be that people need permission to say, rather than the cheesy Christian 'I'm fine' (Feeling Inadequate, Needing Encouragement).  The hope, then, is not in the terms of a promise (though reading bigger chunks than the Northumbria Community list might well give us that), but that it is permissible to express how we really feel and know this will be acceptable to God.

God,

Sometimes we feel worthless, useless, failures

Sometimes we feel abandoned, isolated, rejected

Sometimes we can find no positives to express

Sometimes we wonder, with the psalmist

"My God, have you forsaken me? I am like a worm..."

Despised, if even noticed,

Trodden under foot

People mock

People insult

They shake their heads in despair or derision...

Where does help come from?

God of Jesus, whose cry of dereliction resounds through the ages

We come as we are

Longing for hope, feeling hope-less,

Hear our prayer

Amen