One thing I've been surprised by since I started telling people I was going to Scarborough is how few of them have sung this song in response. But I've had 'songs of encouragement' in so many other ways in recent months.
I joked about moving to Scarborough after being given a copy of 'The Seafront Tea Rooms' by Vanessa Greene a couple of years ago. It's an ordinary work of fiction set on the North Yorkshire coast, but I'd often thought about going to join a smaller church in a Northern town so the setting was of special interest to me as I read.
I first heard about Trinity Church Scarborough last November while constructing IKEA flat pack furniture for a friend. I tried to brush it off, but at the very next church prayer meeting we prayed about new church plants in Yorkshire, and our table was asked to pray for Scarborough.
After sitting on it for a while, I started asking questions. I decided to keep pushing at the door until I came across a reason not to pursue it any further, but no reason came. I started applying for jobs and was offered one a couple of months later.
That suddenly made it all seem real, and a bit more scary. I don't doubt that in the coming weeks and months I will find myself asking 'what have I done?', as the goodbyes and all the other changes take their toll.
But God has provided every step of the way, and I am sure he will continue to do so. So I'll keep putting one foot in front of the other, and leave the rest to him.
I often find myself asking God what my earthly future holds, wanting to know what might happen to me, or to those around me.
A friend gets an exciting new job and I wonder what my next career step will be. I watch a film where a boy and girl get their own happily ever after, and I wonder if that will happen to me. I see a friend have the courage to move to a new place, and I wonder where I might live one day. I often want to know the answers to these and I bring them to God.
From my experience of trying to walk with the Lord, he doesn't generally tell us what he is going to do in the detail of life before he does it. So our calling is to trust in his faithfulness. In his faithfulness to us and to his promises as revealed in the Bible. There are things we are certain he will bring about. But there are lots of things in life that are less clear. God doesn't promise to tell us what he is going to do or when he is going to do it. But when we call to him wanting answers, we know he hears us and he cares.
God does not necessarily mark out mini milestones for us to reach, like a baby toddling between pieces of furniture a few steps at a time, always looking for the next secure thing to grab hold of. But he holds us completely in his hands, like a parent with a newborn.
A minister friend of mine once said that if we could see all the ups and downs in our lives before they came about, we would not have the strength to face them. God doesn't show us a roadmap of our earthly lives in advance. Instead, he calls us to trust him.
We are called to take baby steps, and indeed giant leaps, not because we can see what's coming, but because he can, and he will never leave us.
In case it’s not already highlighted in your diaries as the focal point of your month, 23rd March is Broccoli Appreciation Day (according to a highly official diary I was given several years ago).
Each year I insist on celebrating this feast day with friends, in what has essentially become a broccoli-themed Ready Steady Cook. There was the year of the broccoli and blue garlic appetisers, the time I tried chocolate truffles garnished with raw broccoli spears – and there’s usually some kind of pasta and broccoli bake to form the main carb component.
Despite all this, however, I actually have a small confession to make: I’m not that big a fan of broccoli. I mean, it’s ok (if you have ever cooked me broccoli, I’ve not been hiding it in my handbag or anything). As vegetables go, it’s quite tasty, and the little trees are quite cute.
But Broccoli Appreciation Day has come to be about more than just the broccoli. It’s an excuse to gather with others, to prepare and share a meal together, and to find fun in the everyday.
If broccoli really isn’t your thing, find something else. Find something that helps you connect with another human being, because we were made to relate to others.
Watching a film you could take or leave because a friend has no one to go to the cinema with. Saying yes to playing a sport you’re not that keen on because it’s a way to get alongside someone else who wants to. Getting involved with some DIY or wall painting for someone that just need doing.
Ultimately all these activities are just surface decoration. What matters most is what’s happening underneath them – the art of building community with other people, however small.
And if broccoli is really someone else’s thing, join in anyway, and if necessary, hide it in your handbag.
This post was also published on Those Lines.
