Today I went to a care home

This afternoon Lauralea and I brought a service to the care home next door to the church.

Now, usually when you do a service at a place like this, you can expect people to be splattered all over the theological map. You can expect people to be scattered all over the "Hello, I'm with you and understand completely everything you are saying to us" map too.

So, when I prepare for a little visit like this, I usually try to do lots of singing of the old hymns with them. And I like to pray with them, and read the scriptures with them. As for teaching or preaching, I try to keep it really really simple, so as many people as are able can follow along, no matter their church background, or mental condition.

And, I'm invited by those inviting me, to keep it between 20 and 30 minutes. It's ok.

So today, it all goes very well, except of course that I'm the only one singing, which I'm used to by now, so I don't mind. And I talk to them about Isaiah's prayer and his comment that we are clay and God is the potter. We explored that idea a fair bit, I thought, and the glazed eyes were coming out after 10 minutes of that, so I started to bring that ship into the shore.

After we were done and I was walking through the very little crowd, one guy pulls my sleeve and I bend down to his level.

"That's it? You're done already??"

"Yep" I reply, (Hey, you say things like Yep a lot in there, it's a cowboy themed care home.) "That's the time I'm given."

"Well, it's not enough, you gotta go deeper." He says. "You gotta not worry about tellin them damn stories and get into the deep layers of the word, get into the anointing. We need it over here, we don't have time for entertainment..."

I know what he's saying of course. He wants to eat big food again, like he used to. But he can't get out to his church any longer, and, because of winter, he hasn't been at our church in a while either.

But the urgency is still there.

Life creeps up on you, and you get surprised by how things change, how you change. You get worried because time is running out and you don't have precious time to waste on the damn stories. The fluff that takes up precious space in your life.

So you start sorting, life from the fluff.

It's a part of getting ready to go home. Preparing to travel light.

And it's something we all will go through, if we are given the time and place.

But, we do have the time and place if we have today. We don't need to wait till the end. We can be sorting as we go...

Where we give our time. Where we give our money. Where we give our love.

In all of it, there's always the life giving things, and there's always the damn fluff.

Some advice? Sort as you go, and you won't feel rushed when it's time to go home.