It has poured with rain today in Goldthorpe, and therefore painting the gates and railings has not been finished as planned. However, inside the church building, it feels like the ‘to do’ board, listing all the jobs remaining, is not diminishing much, no matter how hard we work!

Today, we have cleared the stage of all the decorating utensils and made room in one of the storage cupboards for everything:

IMG_2092 IMG_2093The doors from the alcove have been re-hung and new signs put on one of them:

IMG_2094 IMG_2098 IMG_2100And in the meantime, tidying and cleaning continue. We are waiting for the new buffer machine to arrive to help clean the wooden floors and for display paper to arrive so that the new notice boards inside can be decorated. Other jobs include painting the alcove ceiling and finishing the outside painting as well as putting handles back on doors and fingerplates and kickplates on doors. These jobs may seem small compared to the amount of decorating tackled so far, but it’s surprising how long such things take!

A hymn I grew up with has the lyrics:

‘I have tried to count His blessings,
and I fail to understand
Why the Lord should so richly reward;
Could I count the stars of heaven,
add to them earth’s grains of sand,
Still His blessings are more, praise the Lord!

And the end is not yet, praise the Lord,
And the end is not yet, praise the Lord;
Blessings new He’s still bestowing,
And my cup is overflowing,
And the end is not yet, praise the Lord!’ (E. D. Elliott)

It feels like ‘the end is not yet‘ in terms of the work still to be done, and that’s not quite as good a thing as being unable to count God’s blessings! But we remain grateful for all the people who have willingly given up time, energy and money this summer to help with the practical work in the building and look forward to the day when all the work is completed (for now)!