Zetland Park Methodist Church Pastoral Letters
A New Street Map
I made one of those purchases the other day which is a rarity ---- I purchased a new street map. With the ever-increasing nature of our communities, keeping up to date with the names and locations of a variety of new locations is a vital task, if one is to get about and respond to ‘new areas’. Yet, even having a map is no guarantee that one’s passage from home to the intended destination will be a smooth one. Now, I’m not implying that I am totally useless at reading a map, although there is someone who would raise an eyebrow, but what is written and what is on the ground …… well!!
Then there is also the problem in dealing with what looks like a
‘through road’, and there before you is a solid concrete
bollard which clearly indicates that you will have to find an
alternative route to your intended destination. Why is it that this
situation always occurs when you are in a hurry, or late for an
appointment, or in the dark? Then try and weave you way along
unfamiliar streets!!
But I suspect that one of the saddest situations is finding that a road
no longer exists for whatever reason. Cut in two by a new development;
overtaken by industrial clamor; or simply covered over by a wide new
carriageway big enough to take a jumbo jet.
So, back to the new map.
The first thing you have to get used to is the fact that the page numbers and the map references are inevitably different to the former publication, and in my case, the cartographer and book compiler have decided to re-locate the centre of the map so that one piece with which you are familiar is missing and you have now before you another piece you didn’t want!!
Yet this seems also to sum up our expectations of life and living. We are quite comfortable, if not extremely comfortable with ‘an old map’: we know it all and the layout can be followed ‘blind-folded’. Shift the ‘centre’ when life gets complicated through family changes; employment changes and the ‘familiar’ is no longer a viable option. We desperately search for a reference point that will produce a form of stability and guidance; we grasp for any signs of the obviously familiar and maybe, just maybe, cry out for help. But, as I have found while touring some of the new local estates, even those who are resident have no idea outside their own environ limitations. So it can be with ‘life’. You go for the ‘obvious’ but that may not have a ready answer.
We then tend to start and
go over what was to us familiar and sure ground and find that it is no
longer ‘a through road’. There is a blockage which cannot
be removed, and the ‘familiar’ become instead the
‘useless’ and on re-tracing one’s steps you start and
‘go around the houses’, the heart beating faster in that
desperate search for ‘meaning to it all’.
But worst of all is when the ‘familiar’ has been totally
replaced and disappeared without the merest of traces, and you stand
there exasperated and demanding an answer ---- but an answer from
whom?
The ‘Road of
Faith’ has its twists and turns and there is and will be times
when we wonder in fact if we are still on that road! Yet our Scriptures
remind us that the ‘map’ is there: always has been and
always will be.
Sometimes it needs to be interpreted; it needs someone to stand along
side and share information and direction. There are yet other times
when the path we think we can easily travel and get to the
‘destination’ with little if any effort, is not the one the
Lord intends for us to share and so that ‘bollard’ prevents
our way for a time and we are led through other territory.
There are times too when we may feel overwhelmed by
‘newness’ all around and you long for that ‘old
familiar path’ of yesteryear to come again. But does Creation
stand still, or indeed does God?