Well now, it's been an interesting couple of days. Off I go on Wednesday, all innocent like, to a Board meeting at IBTS (if you don't know this wonderful institution, see here http://www.ibts.eu/ ), and within hours of arriving the airports were closed, and life began to look a little more demanding that I had planned for! Only one of our Board could not get to the meeting, coming, as he did, from Norway, but it became increasingly clear that my flight home on Sunday was just not going to happen. Like so many many people around the world, I was miles from home with no idea what to do next. However, unlike so many, I was fortunate to be in a place where there were all sorts of folk with skill and determination to get me home. I was booked on one of the emergency buses - got the last seat - and, although it's not a journey I would like to do too often, I was home only 24 hours after I had originally planned.
While it was deeply comforting that there were people there to do what needed to be done, and who knew how the systems worked, what was more comforting was that I was among friends and those who feel like family; I was in another part of our Baptist world, and so, even away fom home, at home.
One of my friends once commented that she regretted the decision of the second Vatican Council, when the Roman Catholic Church decided to conduct the mass in the language of the country, rather than Latin. Until then, she told me, she had been able to go to church in any country and feel at home, because it was the same. Well, this experience has been rather different from that, but that sense of being among my own people even far away has been deeply reassuring, and made it possible to keep on with what I was there to do, instead of getting paralysed by anxiety.
I have heard people talk about how important our capacity to welcome is, at Bloomsbury; the importance we place on welcoming people in, especially those who come from overseas. We put effort into it, and we take it seriously. Helping people feel at home, giving them a sense of belonging when they feel dislocated, enjoying people's company. Let's never forget just how much fun that can be, as well as how helpful it can be.
The language about the Christian family can sometimes feel over-used and a little ciched. But I have been grateful this week to have discovered it in a new way - and to have been able to come home as a result. I pray that we as a congregation will go on discovering more and more of how to make these phrases real - to bless those who come to visit our city, and to dicover the blessing of new friends.