Bank Holiday weekend and Martin Jamieson

This weekend some of us from Anchorage are camping out at Bugbrooke Chapel during the alive weekend. Guys downstairs in the Chapel itself, ladies in the upper room. That takes me back to when I was about 16 or 17 and I was going with a group of other young people to the lake district. For some reason we stayed overnight in a Church hall in London (I was living in the south of England at the time). Lads were one end of this hall, girls the other with a generous number of responsible adults to make sure there was no hanky panky. Sleeping on the floor has never been conducive to restful nights and the floor was making aggressive moves towards my hip bone. I was next to my friend Jamie. Suddenly in the half light we saw a sleeping bag from the girls side kind of wriggling across the room. It was one of the girls who had taken a fancy to my friend. I think that she thought people would think she was sleep rolling. When she was a few yards away, Jamie said "I'm off" and headed towadrs the toilets. I sat up and said to the girl "we have been watching your progress with interest". Then an adult intervened and that was that fun over. I do not expect we shall have anything like that level of excitement at the chapel. i wonder if the girl (who would now be mid 50's) remembers it with embarrassment. Jamie has changed his name (no connection!) still in touch.

Summer days

The winter is a distant memory and everything is warming up. I am not one of those people who get all excited about summer but at the moment the weather is conducive to feelings of wellbeing. The garden is lovely. We had a barbeque this evening and the children were playing together on the lawn. Maybe life is not so gloomy after all. Summer is the season of fruit and hope perhaps April is spring still. If so it's good.

The right timing.

Last week Debbie and I went to see my Uncle and his family on their small holding in Kent. I remember with fondness visiting as a child and it is good to see that it hasn't changed much, still quite a "Darling buds of May" flavour. Today I recalled an incident which happened when I visited many years ago. My Uncle has always been good with cattle, taking various prizes at shows up and down the country. One day I was with him in the pasture and he was inspecting a particular animal. This animal had a lump on it. This was caused by a fly larvae which had I believe been licked off its legs by the aminal. My uncle got this out by prodding and pinching and then crushed it.

I may have remembered some details wrongly but that was the gist. It strikes me that sometimes life mirrors the Botfly scenario, you've got to wait until things come to a head before you deal with them.I guess even when you take precautions the odd egg gets swallowed, a foreign body at large. But waiting and watching can lead to it being sorted.

Other people's choices

One of the difficult areas of my life is the amount of control I have over others. The whole area of responsibility is a major issue. If I take responsibility for another person it can mean that they cease to take responsibility for themselves, then when I try to return responsibility to them they can blame me for the situation they are in, wheras if I took no responsibility in the first place I would have had no problem apart from maybe a failure to show any compassion.
People I care about make choices which affect others whom I also care about. Although in an ideal world one should not be judgemental I find myself making judgement calls and choices which mean that nobody wins and one or more people ends up hating me, or feeling that I hate them, because I have taken responsibility.

I guess that it is better to attempt to love and care and be disappointed than to be hard and callous.

My ideal job

The thing I like doing more than anything else is helping people practically doing little jobs or transporting furniture or whatever and giving help freely. I am very fortunate that I get the opportunity to do this in my day job. The other day for example we had some bedroom furniture donated. We took it to a girl's flat and the following day when my wife was at work we went to her flat and arranged it (she was away, but knew we were going). It was in many ways uneccessary, she could have coped without but the feeling of just giving to someone over and above what could be expected and without any anticipation of reward is great.


Is this then some kind of self gratification trip masquerading as benevolence. I don't think so.
Abundant giving for no reason with no visible reward, sometimes anonymously is recommended by Jesus nd it certainly fits the bill for me. My ideal job title. helper of others. I would like there to be no paperwork involved though. Selfish? Probably.

Miracles

Most days I get at least one text message from someone I have met a couple of times. He is wheelchair bound and has some mental health problems. He phoned me today and spoke about feeling fear. I prayed with him over the phone. Do I believe he is going to get better? I don't know, what I do know that it's not impossible with God. I would like to see him healed, in fact there are loads of people I know trapped in addictions, spiritual blindnesses, negativity, laziness, hatred, greed, indifference who I would love to see finding healing, and I know God can do it. My prayer is this

Lord teach me to pray effective prayers.

answers to prayer

Wednesday evening and I am at someones house for a cell group meeting. Only two of us present have English as our first language the other six are Farsi speakers. This is pretty common for me. We sing some songs and people pray some in english, some in farsi. I feel alost as if the barrier between us is tangible; they call it the language barrier and it is an accurate description. I cannot get through to these people, they cannot get through to me.

It's pretty frustrating, I wonder if they feel the same. So I sit and I pray. Lord I want to be able to engage with these people! I don't know if desperate would describe the way I feel but at the best I am pretty fed up.

Then in that oblique way that prayers often get answered, something happens seemingly randomly. The other English speaker kind of gets hold of the wrong end of the stick and we are all at cross purposes but out of it, one Iranian guy starts to share, about how he and his wife were unable to have children then they prayed and now they have a baby. All of a sudden we are on the level, a confidence has been shared, a testimony given. As I sit here in front of the computer after getting home I thank God. He's done it again.