TOMORROW

Our house has always been buzzing with people. For over 30 years we have had people coming in and out. With four children there have always been friends and colleagues and visitors. Over the last 5 years we have had a lot of people-with the three boys living at or near enough to be here most days, added to that their friends and girlfriends and added to that the influx of Americans that has amounted to a lot of people. This year my second son has gone to Africa for 15 months working with Children of the Nations. Our first son got engaged to a lovely American girl and returned there within a few days. Our daughter had already left for Dublin where she is married and working happily. Despite the trauma that this caused our house is still fairly packed as we have our youngest son's friend lodging with us and our nephew and sometimes his girlfriend and sometimes other girlfriends so we are not exactly alone.

We do enjoy sharing our house like this and we do have fun sometimes when we sit around the table and chat-those who are left wondered what life would be like without Mark to "debate " with me! I do miss him a lot and I do miss Peter and Ruth but that is how life goes-our job has always been to raise our children, as best we could , in the fear of the Lord helping them to be mature, confident adults and then release them to the wild [makes them sound like birds].

This weekend the boys are off to Dublin to see the new Batman movie and Gillian, my wife is off for the long weekend with one of her sisters and so, for some of this time its just the dogs, Sox and Fox and me in this big house. I have work to do-a sermon to preach and a service to lead on Sunday morning and there are other pieces of work that I could be doing and yet, when everything changes it can be hard to settle and to get motivated [at least I find that but then I am not as disciplined as I should be]

Some people find silence a great source of comfort-I do not, I have always been surrounded my noise, so I turn the radio on or the TV or some music, even though I need silence to think and to pray but today the house seems very silent! The Psalmist says "Be still and know that I am God"
The thought of being alone is scary, the thought of being left behind is frightening. Yet God says "You are not alone". The Orthodox Christians of the east say that the Christian is never alone, God is always with them and we are always surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses-that can be another scary thought-that people are watching everything you do, EVERYTHING!!!!!
Not only does God see what I am doing, even when i know I should not be doing it but other people who may have had certain ideas about me and the level of my Christianity, can also see me.

There are times when i find it difficult just to live in the moment. That means I am always thinking about the next stage, the next person I have to visit or will never get round to visiting, I am thinking of what is off in the horizon. When I was a boy I was always transporting my thoughts to the future- when i was 6 or 7 I remember lying on my bed looking up at the sky and thinking "In the 2000 I will be 50 years old" and for a moment I felt what, i thought, it was like to be 50! That is like really thinking your life away, a waste of the precious time we have. I need to learn to live in the moment otherwise I will always live life in a state of panic. I need to embrace the now and let tomorrow look after itself, or rather God will look after all my tomorrows.