Crossroads magazine August 2004
Dear Friends,
Well, the temperatures are up and our numbers are down - yes, it’s summer again. We have slightly shorter services and we hope that where we sit in the church we can feel the benefit of a fan. When every movement reminds us of how uncomfortable we feel, it can be difficult to remember that we made the initial effort because we want to worship God.
In this respect, our summer conditions are not unlike other aspects of our lives. In our worship, we say that we know that we live the whole of our lives before God - a part of every sermon, at least, is concerned with how God is worked out in the lives he gives us. Remembering that we live before God in all that we do can be difficult - not just difficult to do, which it is, but difficult to live with because it makes us feel uncomfortable, just like the weather. We feel that there’s no escaping it. We can feel as if Big Brother is watching us, our autonomy is threatened, our sense that we’re in charge of our lives is undermined and if we’re not careful, the whole thing quickly becomes oppressive. One answer is to sit where we can feel the benefit of a fan - that is, to live in the knowledge that God’s effort is directed towards easing the stresses on us, not towards increasing them, towards cooling fevered brows, not raising the temperature even higher.