Running To Stand Still

Wow... Its nearly December. Which means I've been writing this blog, on and off, for almost a year now. It doesn't seem like that long... but then again, it seems like an eternity, because my feet haven't really touched the ground in that time.  If I had to come up with a picture of this year, I think it would be of me on one of those horizontal escalators, trying to go against the tide, running as hard as I can, just to stand still!

If that sounds like I'm complaining, then I'm sorry. Most of the chaos and hard work has been completely worthwhile - caused by building work, by trips away and time with family, by challenging new jobs and by exciting changes at church. Other stuff has been for a worthwhile result, particularly around Sarah's operation - not exactly run, definately chaotic, but definately worth while so she can avoid recurring pain and discomfort. I'm certainly not complaining about the outcomes, even at the time it was somewhat painful to get there.

But what I am going to complain about is the headlong rush we now seem to be in towards Christmas. Yes, the year has gone by quickly, but at the moment, its not even December (not for another 14 hours anyway). Advent doesn't start until Sunday (or is that Saturday night - no doubt Keith Neville will have the answer), and yet, we've been inundated with Christmas, Christmas, Christmas, since about the end of September, and its driving me slightly mad...

Do we really need Christmas decorations already? Christmas songs on the radio? Christmas meals in the canteen? Christmas is, of course, important - its important to spend time with those we love, to enjoy the giving and receiving of gifts, to have fun with all the trappings of Christmas that make it so exciting... but isn't it even more important to remember what this is really all about - about the coming of a child, a poor, helpless child, who will go on to change the world.  

The challenge for me, at the end of a year of Running To Stand Still, and at the start of a season of manic activity is to stop and take the time out to prepare - for that is surely the purpose of Advent - to prepare for the coming of the King, both his coming as a child, born in a cave two thousand (and something) years ago, and his future coming in glory, when all the running will cease as we stop and worship the King of Kings... The question is how do I stop now and give him what he so richly deserves?

The More I See, The Less I Know...

Its been a while since I've had time to write a blog.... A church budget, and a new job have somewhat occupied me for the last for weeks, and blogging has dropped down the priority list a little...

The new job is interesting - very different to what I was doing before, even though I'm still working for Jaguar Land Rover, in Finance, I might as well be working for a different company. The people are different (in this new job I've had meetings with the UK, Russia, Australia, the Gulf, the US and Canada, Spain, Italy, Germany, the Netherlands, Brazil and Mexico and China, all in the last two weeks, all without leaving Coventry!) The language is different, with a new set of terminology and acronyms to learn (and re-learn -- some of the TLA's I've been using for the last 3 years now have a completely different meaning!). And, for an accountant who has spent the last 10 years looking at costs (and therefore looking at numbers in brackets all the time), to now be looking at revenue and pricing, and therefore not using brackets for everything is extremely odd!

The problem is, I'm still only scraping the surface of the job - having been here for a month of so now, I was starting to think I was getting to grips with it, and then I looked back at one of the emails I'd received a couple of weeks ago and "parked" to deal with after my virtual globetrotting finished.

When I'd first looked at it, I thought I knew what I had to do with it. But now, with two weeks more knowledge and experience, suddenly I can see so many more questions. Things that I thought were clear are now clouded, as I start to glimpse more of the inter-connectedness of the issues... what happens if I change this - how does it effect that? What about this - does it make a mess of that? If this goes here, where does this other go? Its enough to make me pull my hair out (at least I still have some at the moment, despite the prominence of the receding hairline gene in my family...)

And in the midst of it all, we had a homegroup. Ostensibly focussed on the last line of the Lord's prayer, we actually ended up talking widely around the issue of God's Kingdom, Power and Glory... and it reminded me, once more, that actually, issues of God, issues of faith are something that I'm never really going to fully get my mind around, however logically and rationally I try to approach it...

Just like with my new job experience, where gaining a bit more knowledge showed me just how much more there is to understand, so it is, in an even larger and even more inexplicable way with God!

After all, we're talking about a God who can make, from nothing, an entire universe. I can't even get my head around how big the universe is, yet alone think about what it means to actually create it! And not only create, but populate with life in all its complexity, from single cell micro-organisms, through to something as large as an elephant, as odd as an octopus, and as complex as a human being... and thats just for starters!

It takes me back to why I started this blog, almost a year ago - and why its called "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For" - because actually, although I'm never going to be able to fully understand it, I'm also never planning on stopping trying... but also I hope and pray I never lose the sense of wonder, joy and mystery that comes from trying to consider the indescribable majesty of God.