Commuting

On average (allegedly) a person spends one year's-worth of life commuting.  I think that means in the UK.  It must be seriously skewed by the poor souls using the M25.

 

Someone remarked to me a few days ago,

"I suppose one of the best things about your job is that you don't have to travel to work"

 

 

I'm not convinced about that though.

It is true that it is only fifteen minutes walk from house to church (last church 10 minutes, one before that 5 minutes so it's getting longer . . .). 

 

It is also true that technically my home is my place of work - though if I spent the month there without leaving it is hard to imagine getting approval from the Church members.

 

A local pastor toddles to and from the local hospital(s) and places in the local community and people's living rooms nearby.  By apparent contrast, Hudson Taylor, the great missionary pioneer of Christian faith in China, travelled for the equivalent of 4 years of his life on a boat.  John Wesley racked up an average of 4000 miles a year.

 

Perhaps it is more profound than that.

 

On Sunday morning we read a little of Pilgrim's Progress.  Bunyan's contention is that life is one long commute.  What sets a pastor apart - even from the itinerant missionaries and evangelists - is that a pastor travels not only his own commute but the commute of hundreds of others.

 

No wonder it never feels as though life is standing still.

Days to Remember 6: That 22nd Feeling

I am not privy to what David Cameron feels when he has his regular audience with Her Majesty the Queen.  I imagine he feels somewhat smaller than in many other settings.  Here's one reason - the list of British Prime Ministers who've served under Queen Elizabeth II:

 

Winston Churchill 1951-55
Sir Anthony Eden 1955-57
Harold Macmillan 1957-63
Sir Alec Douglas-Home 1963-64
Harold Wilson 1964-70 and 1974-76
Edward Heath 1970-74
James Callaghan 1976-79
Margaret Thatcher 1979-90
John Major 1990-97
Tony Blair 1997-2007
Gordon Brown 2007-2010
David Cameron 2010-

 

He may be Number One just now, but in another way he's Number 12.

 

It is manifestly unsuitable for a Pastor to compare himself with the hierarchy of politics, though some perhaps do and others do on their behalf. 

 

And yet it evokes a thought remembering one day visiting our oldest Church Member at the time.  My relative longevity and seniority was put into brutal perspective.

 

"It's the Pastor to see you", said the carer down her ear.

 

"Who?"

 

"THE PASTOR"

 

"Oh, I don't know"

 

"YOU DO KNOW HIM.  THE PASTOR FROM UNION BAPTIST CHURCH.  YOUR CHURCH."

 

"The Church?  Who?"

 

"IT'S THE PASTOR - PASTOR JOHN FROM THE CHURCH.  HE'S COME TO SEE YOU"

 

"Oh, I don't know."

 

"YES - YOU KNOW HIM - JOHN ROBERTS -THE PASTOR"

 

"Who?  I don't know, there's been so many of them . . ."

 

Ah yes, you have to have stamina to outlive the elderly ladies of a church.  I may have had the microphone on many Sundays but I was just another in a long, long, line for her!  22nd overall in fact.

 

It reminded me of a pastoral visit I did in the storied First Baptist Church of Dallas where Dr W A Criswell had been the celebrated leader for nearly 40 years at that time.  The elderly lady complained about the new preacher and how she had much preferred his predecessor - who finished in the mid 1940s. 

 

Thank God (albeit perhaps through slightly gritted teeth) for those who remind us we are but parts of chapters in a Greater Story.

Days to Remember 4: 9/11

This is a date that not many of us will forget.

On September 11th 2001 I was also in  a tower, smaller by far than the World Trade Center, yet one of the tallest in our town.  Here it is:

I was visiting Ellen.  She was an older lady and beset with very serious illness (from which within a month she died to this world).  It was soon after 2:00pm British Summer Time and I had picked up a story of a potential bomb or plane crash in New York.  By the time I was at the hospital there was that general muttering about something big happening and my last listen to a radio emphasised how big things were becoming.

Sitting at Ellen's bedside it was possible to sense that a nurse here and there was speaking to another along the lines of, "Have you heard the News?" or "Something's happening in America, isn't it?".

What I will never forget is how, on that least normal of all 21st century afternoons, my pastoral visit to Ellen was absolutely unaffected.  She, it was clear, was coming to the close of her life.  We spoke together; we prayed to God who was not phased by unfolding drama elsewhere (he who upholds all things). I was about to travel through turbulent days: My sister in Christ was coming to that Place of Rest where such things are overwhelmed by the love of God and seeing her Saviour face to face.

It has always given me a perspective on 9/11.  As a Christian Pastor I have a higher calling than world events, even those triggered (as many of them have always been) by socio-religious frameworks.  Soul work is the real work.

For, as Jesus might have said, what does it profit a man if he gains [a lot of media attention and influence in Manhattan Planning Department] and loses his own soul?