What with changes going on all around us such as, Whittington’s future extension and St. Mark’s disability access plans, not to mention proposed housing developments and the slow, but steady, arrival of Spring and the Easter season, now would be a good time to start reaching out to our communities. I don’t just mean our immediate neighbours, though I would never try to expand on the perfect definition of neighbour that Jesus gave us in the parable of The Good Samarian.
Let me explain. The other day I was watching a JCB on a building site moving piles of bricks, cement and various pieces of plant machinery from one place to another with an almost graceful precision. The efficacy and ease with which the giant, metal, almost living, beast worked was hypnotic, a little like a well danced ballet. Anyway, that’s the little boy in me, and long may he live!
After all these nice pristine loads had been moved the situation changed somewhat. Around the outskirts of the site were piles of hard core. Hard core is the stuff which is often overlooked by the untrained eye and can even be mistaken for useless. The truth of the matter however is this is the stuff that goes into the ground to help lay a firm foundation upon which the building can sit.
What was different in this ‘act’ of the performance was the effort that was needed by the JCB. Now it had to negotiate itself around a messy landscape, it had to go to the edges of the building site and use its hydraulic lifting gear to its maximum capacity n order to reach out and collect the essential materials that were needed.
This got me thinking about our mission as Church and as individuals. Do we miss essential and useful potential members by not being prepared to reach out and negotiate messy landscapes? Do we use our gifts to their maximum in order to reach the edges? Could the changes that are going on around us be opportunities to reach out and serve our communities? In just the same way that the JCB needed to reach out in order to further the building of its project so now is the time for us to start reaching out to extend, and make accessible, the Kingdom of God.
with every blessing Nick whois directory