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?