One of my main ministries in life is to remind people when it is Friday.
In fact, Stephen in his days as an airline pilot flying between time zones would welcome my blog as a weekly beacon. “Oh, it must be Friday!” he would exclaim.
This is particularly the case during Christmas week when all our familiar weekly reference points are overwhelmed: we lose track of time.
As human beings we rely on these weekly rhythms to guide us in our various routines. So much so, they become ingrained. It’s our routines which keep us moving. In my case, literally - the ParkRun each Saturday at 9.00. am.
In other words, we need routine, the regular rhythms of life. As actress Jordana Brewster once confessed: “I like having a routine, because everything else is so unpredictable.”
Routine is important. We see this in the life of the good people of Nazareth, the weekly sabbath and the termly trek to Jerusalem as well as the rhythms of the season, seedtime and harvest.
So Luke informs us in this Sundays’ lectionary reading that “every year Jesus’ parents went to Jerusalem for the Festival of the Passover.” (Luke 2:41). And then, two chapters later, he tells us: “Jesus went to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, and on the Sabbath day he went into the synagogue, as was his custom.” (Luke 4:16)
More to the point, Jesus continued to keep these rhythms, even though how he kept them became controversial. He may have chosen to heal on the Sabbath to the fury of the Pharisees but he still healed the man with a shrivelled hand while attending the synagogue service.
So the apostle Paul advises, writing in the Message translation, obviously: “There is no time to waste, so don’t complicate your lives unnecessarily. Keep it simple—in marriage, grief, joy, whatever. Even in ordinary things—your daily routines of shopping, and so on.”(1 Corinthians 7:29)
So psychologist Emily Cooke observes: “Creating daily schedules can help to alleviate stress and make you feel more on top of things, which will in turn build your self-esteem and sense of control,”
The challenge is to make sure that we don’t let our routines run us, especially when it comes to relationships. So we fail to make time for a friend because on Tuesday evening we play darts.
Even as I write this we are doing our best to meet up with a long-standing friend but they can’t fit us in, such is the busyness of their lives. It’s possible that this busyness is their way of coping with a particular stress – that’s why we want to visit them, and if that is the case, then they’re enslaved to their schedules.
Moreover, every so often our regular routines disappear – we move house, change job, a loved one dies. And we find ourselves, so-to-speak, at sea.
I find this in my bereavement ministry, that mourning has two distinct components, not to be confused – firstly, we miss the presence of our loved one. Of course. But alongside this, particularly if we had a caring responsibility, our whole daily routine disappears. Suddenly an extra eight hours appears to be filled.
But routine is more than how we live our lives as individuals. As importantly, even more importantly, there are those routines we have as families, as communities, as nations. It is these particular rhythms which keep us in synch, preventing us from becoming atomised individuals.
A sad article appeared in the Times on Christmas Eve, with the heading: Lonely this Christmas: more young adults to spend the day. It seems that 1 in 11 people aged between 21 and 34 will not have company, compared with just 1% in 1969.
Professor Bobby Duffy, director of the King’s institute, is quoted: “Christmas is just a little bit lonelier and less joyous or magical than it was 55 years ago. The proportion of people spending the day alone has doubled, we’re less likely to say we enjoy it..”
Here, as Christians we have much to offer, not least with the weekly and seasonal rhythm of our services. Sometimes all we need to do is just turn up. We may not particularly enjoy the service – in some ways, that is neither here or there. It’s just something we do, each Sunday, each Christmas Eve, each Remembrance Sunday.
We enjoyed a wonderful carol service at my son-in-law’s church in Bunbury – packed. The following day the church was just as full for their crib service Christmas Eve but with a different demographic. Tim tells me that most people in his parish have been through his church sometime this Christmas week.
Now not many places nowadays have the social dynamic of a Cheshire village – but wherever we are, as disciples of Jesus we offer community to a lonely world.
As the saintly President Carter, who celebrated his centenary this October, concluded: “We are a community. Our individual fates are linked; our futures intertwined; and if we act in that knowledge and in that spirit together, as the Bible says: We can move mountains.”
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