Monday, August 18, 2008

Sunday's events

After a bit of pottering around here this morning, with finalizing details for the AGM and doing the blog, we left for Harry and Jenny’s place at 10. We have to give ourselves plenty of time for travel, because of the closure of Ladder Hill road. Public Works and Services Department has devised a clever scheme though for traffic headed to the western stretches of the island from town, in that they’ve opened Shy Road, which links up with Ladder Hill Road directly above where the car accident was. However, Shy Road is only a single lane with no passing bays, so at certain times of the day it is for up-bound traffic only, and at other times for downward traffic only. They announce the times on the radio, but in case you miss that you can look on your car radio if it’s enabled to receive text messages, and the times scroll across the display. Quite high-tech stuff. Getting back to our travels though, we needed to stop in at the Manse to get church clothes, and I also retrieved my mandolin and a few more schoolbooks, and then we were off. Jenny was hard at work in the kitchen and had been busy all morning already, and by lunch time we could see why. She blessed us with enormous quantities and variety of food – sweetcorn, pumpkin, rice, steaks, amazing roast potatoes (lots of them) and a gorgeous salad with battered tuna sticks, fresh pineapple, carrots and lettuce. For dessert she had made a steamed ginger pudding and custard. Then there was a chocolate cake which we didn’t even get into both because we were simply too full, and because we ran out of time before we needed to get to church. Nick left at 1.10 to be in time to pick up two people and get to the chapel, and we left about 40 minutes later. As it was, Nick ran slightly late – we ended up getting to the chapel at the same time! It was already quite full. Vincent led the service, so Nick could join us in the second bookshelf, I mean pew, in the chapel. During the singing of the second hymn, we both wept – I guess we just needed to. It was wonderful to cry things out. The first verse of the hymn was particularly meaningful:

Let Your living water flow over my soul.
Let Your Holy Spirit come and take control
Of every situation that has troubled my mind.
All my cares and burdens on to You I roll.

I had to repent of feeling sorry for myself and allowing anxieties to catch up with me, instead of simply trusting that God will work everything out. When Nick got up to preach he was still very emotional and struggled to read the devotion he had prepared for the bulletin:

Here are some verses to guide us in our response to the rockfall and the damage done to church property.
Job 1:20-22 “Then Job arose and tore his robe and shaved his head and fell on the ground and worshiped. And he said, "Naked I came from my mother's womb, and naked shall I return. The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord." In all this Job did not sin or charge God with wrong.”
In the book of Job we see a righteous man being allowed to suffer the loss of all of his property and family. It is never revealed to Job the reason why God allowed this to happen, and when God appears to Job at the end of the book He does not offer Job an explanation either. The most powerful lesson of the book of Job is his example which is captured in the verses above. Notice that he responded to God in worship in verse 20, accepts God’s sovereignty and right to give and take away in verse 21 and never accused God (verse 22). As we as a church face the crisis of the loss of church property, we need to make Job our example in how to respond. God has unseen purposes and all that matters for us at this time is to be faithful and to trust in the Lord.

After that the preaching proceeded as normal. I don’t think that the people will remember Nick’s message as much as his response to the disaster. I think a lot of people were a bit weepy during the service. We had the AGM directly following the service, and it was long and boring as AGMs tend to be. Also slightly disorganized in that certain pieces of paper which should have been photocopied and distributed are lying covered in dust at the Manse. It was good though, with much thanksgiving to God for His provision for us over the last year. After the AGM we had a little slide-show prepared on the laptop of the damage to the church properties, and I suspect that our church folk hadn’t had any idea of the actual extent of the devastation or the very real danger we were in up until then. After that there was a lot of hugging and more tears! We only left church at 5.30; Harry and Jenny had been waiting around all this time to help us with transport in getting home, knowing that Nick would be full up, which he was.

Caleb says he doesn’t know what the big deal is all about, and Aaron is also living in la-la land. A major disaster for them is not rocks falling on your house and nearly killing you, it’s when they can’t get the solitary cherry in the middle of the chocolate cake. So, on the whole they’re happy and untraumatised (even though I ate the cherry).

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