Stephen spoke from 1 Peter 2:4-6 TNIV this morning, reminding us that we are all ‘living stones’. It was a message to each one of us individually and collectively, for this passage describes what every Christian is in Christ.

Stones are generally thought of as inanimate objects. I love stones. Being on a beach full of pebbles and stones is a great experience, for there is so much diversity there. When we were in Laxey, Garry and Stephen both spent hours skimming stones into the sea; we discovered subsequently that there is actually a stone-skimming championship held annually in the UK!

God calls us ‘living stones‘, however. A stone generally is not living; it doesn’t fulfil the MRS GREN category for life (to be classed as living, things have to have Movement, Respire, have Sensitivity, Grow, Reproduce, Excrete and need Nutrition). God gives life to the dead, however, and we have been brought from death to life (Eph 2:1-7 TNIV). We are no longer passive or inanimate, for God, the Giver of all Life, has breathed life into us. Our God is alive and makes us alive!

We all matter to God and are important to Him. We all have purpose in Him, purpose which is growing and ongoing. Again, we tend to think of a building as being lifeless and some buildings don’t even seem to have any purpose, but we are being built into a holy house. If God lives within us by His Spirit, then there is life within the house! We are chosen by God and every day of our lives can know purpose and meaning, our lives shining forth with vibrancy and colour because God is like that! We need God to keep the fires burning in our lives so that we do not become jaded and lifeless, but instead let God’s light shine through us.

Every Saturday morning from 10 a.m. until 12 noon, our church is involved in a coffee morning. A rota of willing volunteers help to make drinks for people which we sell at modest prices (where else could you get a hot drink for 50p these days?) People from our church, other churches and the general community out doing their Saturday shopping drop in to have a drink and a chat. It’s a great opportunity to get to know people and to be the first point of contact some of them have with a church. We take drinks to the market stall holders and try to build relationships with people. It’s a great ministry, rooted in everyday conversations and practical love. Our thanks go to all who selflessly give up their time to help with this and to all who make it worthwhile by coming along and sharing with us!

Tonight members of our church and the Methodist church at Great Houghton attended a meeting at the Salvation Army to reflect on the work being done in the food bank. We are so grateful for this opportunity to help serve the poor and needy in our community and it was exciting to hear testimonies of how God is blessing this work and using the outreach to bring people to know Him. We enjoyed the hospitality of the Salvation Army who provided tea for us and then listened to testimonies of all God is doing locally as well as worshipping and praying together.

It is humbling to see how God is working in all the local churches in Goldthorpe and to know that we are part of a much bigger something that God is doing. As Matthew West sings below, if we are God’s hands and feet, we need to be doing something to reflect His heart and this is one way of doing something! Please continue to pray for the many people in real need whose lives are being touched and blessed by God through the generosity of local people.

‘Do Something’, Matthew West
The story behind the song

New blinds have just been fitted in the kitchen and in the rest of the community hall:

One of the first things we ask people when we meet them is ‘What do you do?’ Usually what we mean by that is what job they do. Jobs take up a large part of our lives for many years and are often a neat box into which we can fit people. You can tell a lot about a person, we reason, from the job they do.

I am increasingly frustrated, however, by our culture’s obsession with putting people into boxes and also by this assumption that any job, or anything we do for that matter, is the thing that defines us. More and more I believe that who we are is the thing that defines us, not what we do. And more and more I believe that what we do for the vast majority of our adult waking hours is not simply a job but is actually a vocation.

A job is an assignment to do work that can be quantified and evaluated and measured. It’s usually fairly easy to see if a job has been done or not; it can even be easy to see if the job has been done well or badly. But a vocation is not a job in that sense, although often it will involve doing specific tasks. A vocation is a calling, a sense of the divine in the mundane. I believe all of us should live life with that sense of calling and divine guidance.

Most of us, however, prefer the job description to the idea of calling, because at heart it is easier to live under law than under grace. Do not misunderstand me: it is not better to live that way, nor is it more fulfilling. But it is a lot easier to have a ‘to do’ list that can be neatly ticked off at the end of a day than it is to wrestle with the question ‘what have I actually achieved today in the things I’ve done?’ It’s easier to list all the dishes we’ve washed or the shelves we’ve stacked or the books we’ve marked or the number of plants we’ve tended than it is to know if we have responded to the nudge of God to spend time listening to a colleague’s woes or helped someone through our fellowship. Jobs are visible and it is easy to see if we have done them or not. Calling is invisible and not at all easy to evaluate.

I have been meditating on this for weeks, especially in the light of considering my vocation as a teacher and seeing this shift as God closes some doors and opens others. The workshop ‘Imagine Church’ clarified my long-held view that all Christians need to see their work as vocation; it is not helpful to have any kind of sacred/ secular divide in our thinking, for God is over all and in all. As I have been reading Eugene Peterson’s memoir ‘The Pastor’ this week, I was relieved (and pleased) to see that this tension between jobs and vocation is something he has also faced. “How do I keep the immediacy and authority of God’s call in my ears when an entire culture, both secular and ecclesial, is giving me a job description? How do I keep the calling, the vocation, of pastor from being drowned out by job descriptions, gussied up in glossy challenges and visions and strategies, clamoring [sic] incessantly for my attention?” (Eugene Peterson, ‘The Pastor’ P 165)

Job descriptions are easy to write. It can be a useful thing to do, to evaluate what you actually do in the course of a day and to see that with fresh eyes. I have been helping Florentine to adjust to her new job as a French teacher and that is an eye-opener, for so much of what I took for granted about the job is new to her and she is having to adjust to its demands slowly. But no job description can ever truly summarise our calling and it cannot be allowed to define us. We are so much more than the sum of all we do. Don’t let the mundane drown out the Voice calling daily to take up His cross and follow Him; don’t focus on what you do more than on the daily challenge to become more like Christ.

Last week as we studied 1 John 1:5-6 TNIV, we looked at the vast statement ‘God is light; in Him there is no darkness at all.’ We discussed the idea of dazzling, blinding light and how God often uses the symbol of fire to represent light, as in the pillar of fire which led the Israelites by night during the wilderness wanderings. We discussed how darkness is the absence of light and how light seems to dawn gradually at times. Light brings clarity to situations and often seems less frightening than the darkness simply because we can actually see where we’re going!

As always, a Bible study triggers ongoing musings and thoughts. I was reminded of Martin Luther King’s profound quotation: “Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.” I also thought about Plato’s statement: “We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.” John echoes that thought in his gospel, saying ‘Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed.’ (John 3:20-21 TNIV) Sometimes the darkness actually seems safer than the light, for the light reveals all our sin.

As we reflect on light and darkness, we see that God’s light is holy, revealing His purity and goodness. Phil Wickham has written a song called ‘Holy Light’ which captures this idea well:
“God who reigns over earth and sky,
Flood this world with Your holy light.
Start a fire that will never die;
Flood this world with Your holy light.” (‘Holy Light’, Phil Wickham)
‘Holy Light’, Phil Wickham