Rythms of Life

After my evening in Luton on Sunday i went along to our normal weekly n:flame team meeting on Monday morning. Chris Curtis from Luton Churches Education Trust (LCET) was speaking at it. I had met Chris a few times in my year there.

He spoke to us and helped us to reflect upon '5 questions to ask myself in ministry'. Here are what they are:

1) Am i more committed to character than success?

2) Do i sell my faith or live it?

3) Is there a gap between what i preach and what i live?

4) Am i nourishing my spiritual life?

5) Am i prepared for hard work?

Some of these questions cut me to my core. Not that they are new to me or the answers or lost upon me but sometimes i just find them so damn hard to do. One other that i think had us shuffling around was when Chris asked when the last time we read scripture without it being for the preparation of something?

This talk and reflection fitted in perfectly with my thoughts over the past few weeks. Yesterday i started re-reading Christine Sine's excellent book 'Sacred Rhythms:Finding a Peaceful Pace in a Hectic World'.

I like this quote p28

"Unfortunately the world around us provides many rhythms that compete with God's rhythms - and we are convinced that these abnormal rhythms are normal. 'Normal is getting dressed in clothes that you buy for work, driving through traffic in a car you are still paying for, in order to get to the job that you need to pay for the clothes, car and the housethat you leave empty all day in order to afford to live in it.'

For some of us normal is a frenetic lifestyle in which we try to practice our spirituality with the same exhausting rhythm. For others normal has no spiritual pulse at all. Our busyness has crowded out all religious observances and our spiritual heartbeat is getting slower and slower and slower. For still others of us erratic and random is the order of the day. There is no pattern to our spiritual rhythm - we stop and start, pray furiously for a few days and then get distracted by the cares and worries of this world and ignore God all together, hoping that the occasional and irregular prayers we offer will be sufficient to sustain us through the trials of life."

And now a Wesleyan prayer that we said together yesterday morning. May this challenge each one of us in the weeks, months and years ahead:

I am no longer my own, but thine.
Put me to what you will, rank me with whom thou wilt;
Put me to doing, put me to suffering;
Let me be employed by thee or laid aside for thee,
Exalted for you or brought low for you;
Let me be full, let me be empty;
Let me have all things, let me have nothing.
I freely and heartily yield all things to your pleasure and disposal.
And now, O glorious and blessed God,
Father, Son and Holy Spirit,
thous art mine, and i am thine. So be it.