How We Got Here

Over the past few weeks, we’ve learnt a lot about ‘work in progress’. There are many stages to renovating things, most of which are unseen by the time the actual work is finished.

For example, the gate at the side of the building was worked on off-site and then brought to the building last week.

It was then painted with red oxide paint to help prevent rusting and to give added protection:

Then it was painted with black paint (several times!) to give it its final finish:

The end result looks great, but the other stages are now invisible to the casual observer. Hours of hard work have gone into many things which are largely unseen now, but the final effect only looks so good because of all the unseen work.

In the same way, we are all ‘works in progress’. God has lots of shaping to do in us, and so much of the refining and changing goes on unseen, in private, works of preparation that are largely invisible to the outside world: “…we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.” (2 Cor 3:18) What we will be finally is not yet seen, but we know that when we see Jesus, we will be like Him (1 John 3:2).

It’s great to be able to look at a job on completion and see the finished work. But in the meantime, let’s remember that every stage in the job is crucial, and God’s not finished with us yet!

On Saturday 1st May, we…

… finished cleaning the community hall floor

… re-painted the badminton court lines onto the community hall floor

… fitted security lights outside

… put up the new church notice board

… painted the church gate

… finished sorting the heating system out in the main hall

… painted the radiators in the main hall

… fixed a lock on a door

… started boxing in the piping in the main hall

So all in all, it was a busy day!

After months of working at St Mark’s, we finally removed the boards from the windows down the side. Light came streaming in! It has made such a difference to how the community hall looks.

Removing the boards

We washed the windows outside and then painted the window frames

We washed the windows on the inside:

The light is dawning!

Just to let you know that we have reached the stage where we are thinking about an official opening! There is still a lot of work to be done, but we are hoping to have a grand opening and Open Day on Saturday 3rd July from 10 a.m. until 3 p.m. with an evening celebration meeting that will start at 7 p.m.

We would love to see loads of people at these events, so please take this as a general invitation, with more details to follow as we organise them!

Jesus taught people by telling stories or parables, often focussing on an ordinary event (such as gardening or building) to give the listeners a familiar background into which He could reveal spiritual truth. Stories and parables are a fantastic way of engaging the listener and drawing them in; the ordinary and everyday happenings in life are often the starting point for our journeys of discovery.

God is everywhere and can be found just as much in the ordinary as in the spectacular. One of the dangers of our spiritual walk is if it becomes separated or divided from our everyday living. We put God into a box and see no connection between what we read or hear on a Sunday and how we live our lives during the week. Everything is compartmentalised and separated.

God is not interested in that kind of living. He is interested in speaking to us at any time, in various ways, and in our living out our faith in every practical situation we face. ‘God in my living, there in my breathing, God in my waking, God in my sleeping’, as the Tim Hughes song puts it. We need God to be everything to us, at all times, in every situation, no matter where we are or what we are doing.

One of the joys of working in St Mark’s has been to find God in the ordinary, in the mundane, as much in the practical jobs (such as clearing rubble and soldering joints) as in the church services we hold on Sundays. Daily we are reminded of the truth of Colossians 3:17:

“And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father.”

As we see God in the ordinary jobs of life and find Him in the everyday happenings, let us learn to live lives that are wholly given over to Him, so that God may truly be our everything.

One of the truly amazing and heartening things about working at St Mark’s has been the slowly unfolding revelation that God uses everything we go through to bring us to a place where all our previous experience can be of use to Him and His kingdom. It’s been inspiring to see that we have so much talent in our church, so many people who ‘just happen’ to have done things in life which are really useful in the things we are now doing!

One of those talents was used this past weekend as we have worked on the central heating system in the main hall. One of our church members has a lot of experience in fitting radiators and piping. You might think that familiarity breeds contempt, but as he supervised someone else on this job (his ‘creaking joints’ making it impossible for him to do the work himself!), he saw things from a new perspective…

“Standing back and watching someone learning to do a task that is very familiar for me opened up a whole new perspective. As I watched Garry gently warm the joints with the blowlamp and then apply the solder, I could see that when the temperature of the joint was just right, the solder was sucked into the joint. The solder then bonds to both the pipe and the fitting and makes a strong, waterproof joint. If the joint was not heated enough, the solder would just sit at the end of the fitting and not produce the required effect. If too much heat is applied, the solder is burnt off and again the joint will not be right.

“I have done this process many, many times over the years but as I have been quite close to the work and absorbed in what I was doing, I hadn’t really appreciated it.

As I watched this process I realised that it illustrates how God has to deal with us.

We need to be joined to God with an unbreakable bond. The solder that God uses is the Holy Spirit and God uses a variety of methods of applying the heat to allow the Holy Spirit to flow into us and to achieve that unbreakable union. Sometimes that heat may come from adversity, sometimes from circumstances we find ourselves in, sometimes from encouragement and praise.

“But in all these the purpose is to bring us to the point where the Holy Spirit can flow and, just like the solder, bond us to our Heavenly Father.

“Garry soon learnt to apply just the right amount of heat. Not too much to burn off the solder, not too little so that the solder did not flow properly. And in the same way, the Holy Spirit is expert at applying just the right amount of whatever is needed to strengthen our bond with God.”