Well, last night was another rough one. So far, our growing armoury of antidotes hasn’t been successful in the assault on Annie’s coughing fits at night. It was probably in the early hours of this morning before we were properly able to get a few hours of uninterrupted sleep before sunrise; and to make matters worse, Annie is now wrestling with a pretty nasty cold that she probably picked up from me.

The doctor on call came out to check on Annie and added to our arsenal with antibiotics which I went to pick up this afternoon. We now have quite an impressive medicine cabinet; if only some of it were potent! Generally, the coughing fits are just a nocturnal nuisance and leave Annie alone during the day.

There seems to be an incessant amount of administration to take care of and it is easy to feel and become overwhelmed. There’s a fine line between managing the admin responsibly and allowing it to rob us of time in the present. I often need that reminder and last night I needed to hear it again from Annie. So we attempted to have a more peaceful and paced day today.

You’ll hopefully notice in the margin of the blog, we’ve added a little ‘Visitation Status’ section to help deal with the amount of visits in the week. It’s difficult to predict how Annie will feel each day and I just want to make sure as Annie’s husband that I protect the time she needs to rest, seeing that she is not finding it in the normal order of the day. I hope the visitation status doesn’t strike you as cold and formal. It’s just a practical attempt at managing the day around our commitments and Annie’s strength levels.

Well, moving on from a rough night to a wonderful – really, a WONDERFUL – evening.

This evening we gathered at the home of Pam and Stu for a time of fellowship and praise. If you’re not a Christian and you’re reading this, let me tell you something: forget what the TV commercials tell you about Celebrity Chefs, Marks and Spencers, Sainsbury’s et al: no one does food as good as God’s family. Whenever we dine together, at the head of our table sits Jesus, the real Masterchef; the one who took the equivalent of a tin of tuna and a few baguettes and put on a belly-busting meal for at least 5,000 people. I don’t know what you all ate this evening, but at our little bring ‘n share of 26 people, we ate like guests at the King of king’s table!

And on the subject of food, there’s no other group of people in this world that can say without pride or arrogance that our dinner parties are truly divine. In fact, when you read through the gospels next time, keep a track on how often Jesus performed and taught divine things around the meal table or among a crowd of hungry people. This evening we gathered in the name of our King to eat, drink and praise Him and in our midst He did something incredible.

As our time of singing and praising was drawing to an end, a non-Christian friend of ours, who joined us, responded to the Spirit’s prompting and gave her life to Jesus! For the last few months she has been coming to Sunday services where she has – among other things – heard the Word of God preached faithfully. In recent months, we’ve invited her to our home group so that she might discover and witness more about Jesus among His people. This evening’s gathering had no agenda, no sermon, no altar call but in the midst of our time of fellowship and praise, she finally recognised the Lord Jesus and accepted Him as Her Saviour!

I think as far as church life in general goes, we are good at our Sunday services. They achieve great things in the work of the Gospel. But let’s not forget how important it also is to ‘do life’ with one another and around others in the world, outside of our Sunday services.

Maybe I’ll ask Annie to journal an entry on how this all went down because she was the one who prayed with this dear friend before sharing the news. But for now, let’s just say, the day all ended in tears…the good kind!

Another kind of praise party goes on in the presence of the King of Heaven this evening!

All Hail King Jesus!

R&A