For a quiet month, July is a very busy month for us. We have had our annual picnic in Regent's Park - always a delight! - and our AGM, and yesterday was our Church Anniversary. We welcomed Graham Sparkes, the head of the Faith and Unity Dept of the Baptist Union, as our preacher in the morning. He spoke with us about the importance of roots, and of not being held back by them, but of always being willing to travel on to wherever it is that God is leading us next. During his sermon, he quote a poem of RS Thomas, including a description of God as the one who is always just ahead of us, who has always just left where we are arriving.
It's an image I have come across on various occasions, and it never fails to tease and attract me. For, among other things, it is the reminder that we cannot limit God, or decide where we are going and inform God of it, or even necessarily have a clear notion of where we are going to be next.
As a traveller, I am very anxious! I like to know where I am going and how I am going to get there - or better yet, I don't want to go at all. I want to stay at home, where I know what is going on, and what I am doing. The idea of following the lead of God without knowing, except in the most general terms, where that will take me, is deeply disturbing and unnerving.
And yet, I am deeply moved and encouraged by this vision of God as the one is not only always ahead of us, but just a flicker of an eye out of sight. For it does allow the possibility that God is greater then my ideas and plans, and probably knows a good deal better than I can what is life and life-giving.
Anniversary is a time when we look back in thankfulness and repentance - and ahead with expectation. What are we hoping for, indeed, planning for. There are changes coming, ones we haven't planned and can't control, as the buildings around us change, and we acquire new neighbours and new possibilities. And there will be changes and challenges that we do not know about yet. And in the face of them all, we do have a choice; will we meet what comes, and work in and through it open to what God is doing, and where God is leading us without putting limits on it, or pre-determining what it will be. Or will we be shaped my our (my?) anxiety, and keep everything safe?

One of the delights of ministry is the variety of activities we get invited to share in. In three days over this weekend I attended two (very different) weddings and the church AGM (as well as regular services). All of the events had their own flavour and impact, but what has remained with me in the days since is what there was in common; the determination to build a life together. For both the couples marrying, this is clearly at the heart of the whole event. But it is also central to the AGM of the church - and indeed to the gatherings for worship. For in these events too there is a commitment to being "with" the people around us, and developing some kind of common life. In our gatherings for worship, we listen together to Scripture, we offer our prayers, we share in singing and in silence. And we do it together - and with the intention/expectation that what we do in our gathering will shape how we live in the other parts of our lives - whether we share these or not.
And in our AGM, we meet, intentionally in the name of Jesus, in the expectation that, listening to each other we will discern the mind of Christ for our community's life and direction. These conversations can be slow and gentle, heated and energetic, life-giving and stimulating - but all of them take place in the context - and commitment - to being together. Even in the moments when we disagree - or even frustrate each other - we know that we belong together.
It is one of the significant things about being church, that we not only talk about being together, but we work out what it means through action, conversation and struggle. Being part of the church is not just about joining in when we fell like it, like each other or agree. Just like marriage, it involves living through good and bad times, easy agreement and disagreement, and finding the fun, joy and respect in it all.
Thank God for the grace that shapes it all.

I have just had a few days holiday, last week, which explains the lack of blog (anybody notice?) It was a fun time, enjoying a few days with family and being a tourist in London. Part of what we did invovled being around school trips, and what with that and spending time with youngsters enjoying the freedom of school holidays (they start earlier in Scotland) I was remembering those first few days of school holidays and the way the break always started. We always ended each term with a service in the local parish church, and from all the services I went to in that context, the overwhelming memory is of the minister telling us to remember that God never took a holiday. I think his intention was to reassure us that God did not forget us when we were not going to regular weekly assembly, but there was also the message that God did not take holidays and so we should not forget God.
I got hold of that one well enough; taking holidays has never come easily to me. God does not take holidays, told to me with a good intention, has become translated into - if you are not busy you are not pleasing God.
I am writing this on a Monday - yesterday was a good Sunday, and, as usual, a very busy one. Sundays at Bloomsbury are never anything but busy - for all sorts of us. There are meals to get ready, music to prepare, the sound system to get working, people to marshal in and out, tickets to manage, visitors to welcome, youngsters to care for - and that doesn't take into account all the things we didn't plan for, but still need to be done. A surprising number of them on any given Sunday, in case you are wondering.
And I am deeply, deeply grateful for all of the people around this place who do all this stuff, and make it work, and smile and show grace while they do.
And I just wonder if there is any time to breathe, to rest, to take a holiday, even for a few moments.
Because I have come to believe that those who told me that God never takes a holiday were wrong. Look at Genesis 2;2-3. That's a holiday (God looked at all that he had made and saw that it was good - and on the seventh day he reasted from his work)
Yes - there's a lot to be done. Yes - it never actually comes to an end, and there is always more. But might there be a space, just occasionally, to join God in God's own holiday, and enjoy the goodness of the world without having to spend all our time and all our energy in making it work?
And yes - I know I shouldn't preach it if I won't live it.

I will if you will...