Don't always get it right!

Yesterday an elderly parishioner passed out in church. Right in the middle of my sermon!

This happens from time to time and is not usually because they have been so overtaken by the Holy Spirit that they swoon. It seemed a little more serious than that, and indeed was.

Despite the fact that I had been thinking during the week that I needed to do a bit more/better sermon preparation in order that the receivers might be able to have a chance of receiving it well...and I was a little bit more conscientious...I just decided that it was best to jettison it in mid-stream.

Not much else you can do when all eyes and ears are elsewhere.

Important lessons?

We always need to be coy about how much of the preaching exercise depends on we preachers any way.

Perhaps the incident was a sermon in itself. I was able to draw out a 30 second reflection after the ambulance had been and gone that what I was actually talking about was the presence of Christ in the world, and that so often we didn't cope well with things like a medical emergency during worship because we have invested so much energy in making worship a cocoon against the approach of the world.

Any way, A was taken off to hospital and says (in her nineties) that she plans to live for another 20 years!

More resolutions

Following on from the resolutions blog the other day. One of the ten or so positive resolutions was to to talk 'health' rather than 'sickness'.
I think this is quite a good insight. As a person whose job requires much inane conversation just to pass the time of day, I realised many years ago that when people ask you "How are you?"they don't really want you to tell them.
In fact the redoubtable A. Musgrave Horner, my one time lecturer in Speech and Drama, hated this and would say if asked this inane question "I am EXTRAOOOOOORDINARILY well!" In a voice that would boom three blocks. You tended to never ask him again!
However I did think that talking of health rather than sickness does not just refer to disease, it is an attitude about how life is going. So we can choose to play it up or play it down .
Treasurers (in parish, club or nation) often have to address the sickness in order to be honest. They also need to recognise it is not only about sickness, but about how health might be achieved. And, indeed, health probably cannot be achieved if only the sickness framework is addressed.
It is about perspecvtive, and should easily be recognised as a good resolution...to talk health rather than sickness .

In the midst of life

A colleague writes today that their teenage son who is fighting for his life after intrusive medical treatment, bone marrow transplant, tissue rejection, all sorts of horrible reaction....I could go on but it is all too horrible for them...says now that "He had been doing a lot of thinking and he told us that he knows that he is dying. He has made the decision to not be put on life support and while we will maintain active treatment, it will only be a matter of time before his body finally cannot go on fighting this disease."
I have said in reply to them that I am sorry that the only thing I can do is pray hard and often, and yet I also know that this is the best thing I can do.
Without going into the ins and outs of it, or teezing out any of the subtleties of what this is all about; can those of you know how to pray (and perhaps even some of you who don't) : pray for Chris, for Steve and Judy his parents and Michael his brother.