Plodding

It’s not in the Bible, but I have a picture in a frame with the words: “Blessed are the plodders, for they will eventually reach their destination.” I’m a plodder. I’m a very good plodder. I keep going. I don’t give up. I am loyal. And I am committed. If I commit to something I stay committed. I’m not one of these people who always has to have something new on the go. I don’t do short term. It’s a quality. It means I am reliable. You can count on me. But it’s quality that sometime gets me into trouble. What goes with it is a tendency to take on too many things because I don’t stop something when I start something new. A few years ago I realised I couldn’t sustain all the things I was doing. Something had to go. So, I started to give things up, things I’d been committed to for a long time. I stepped down from being a Chair of Governors. I stepped down from being Chair of the Easter Team Difficult decisions. You’d have thought I’d have learned my lesson wouldn’t you? But no! Quite quickly I found other things to be committed to. Actually I’m an odd mix. I’m a plodder, committed, reliable and in it for the long haul. But I also like something different. I like a bit of excitement. I like a sense of anticipation about the unknown. So when lockdown came, it brought an excitement. We had to do church differently. We had to get to grips with live streaming. A bit scary but I loved it. And I loved the different routine. It was, in a strange way, refreshing. I would never have chosen any of it, but plunged into the middle of it all I found it brought a new sense of excitement and anticipation. I’ve just written Newsletter No. 10 which means we’ve been doing this for a while now. And now, I’m plodding again. And rather than feeling the excitement, I feel the anxiety of an uncertain future. What will this look like in a few months time? What will church look like in a few months time? Will we have to go through another set of radical changes? I’m a plodder. Change is not my forte. After three years of following Jesus and all the excitement that brought, the disciples went back to plodding. Actually they went back to fishing. It’s what they knew. One night they went out and caught nothing. Catching nothing wasn’t good - this was their livelihood. Then, as morning dawned, a man on the beach asked if they’d caught anything. He asked it in a way that showed he knew the answer was “No!” He told them to cast their net over the other side of the boat . They did and they caught so many fish they struggled to drag the nets in. Jesus cooked them breakfast, but not with the fish they’d caught. He already had his own, so either he’d already been fishing, or shopping! Thing is, why did he wait till morning to do that? Why didn’t he just help them catch fish while they were fishing during the night? Why did he put them through that? I’m back to plodding and I find myself wondering what God is doing in all this mess. Seems to me, that’s the thing with Jesus. He does come to us, but not in the ways we expect.