Nothing!

If ever you’ve tried to write a blog, one thing you’ll know is that you have to have something to say! I spend time thinking about what I’m going to write, and sometimes that can be quite challenging. I try to think back over the week just gone and look at what’s happened so I can reflect on it in my blog. Weeks that have a lot going on are great. There’s lots to reflect on. But some weeks are, well, weeks where noting really happens. Obviously things happen in every week. But not always things that make for an interesting blog (assuming that anything written in this blog counts as interesting). And I’ve had one of those weeks where nothing out of the ordinary happened. That’s not to say I haven’t been busy. I haven’t been in one evening this week, I’ve been out every one of them! And the days have been equally full. But it was the ordinary things that filled the time. The things I expect to find in any week. I like weeks when there’s a bit of something different. I like a bit of spontaneity. Weeks with some excitement or something different are great and they make me feel I’m doing something important. But that doesn’t mean that the weeks when nothing happens, aren’t also important. They are. Just in a different way. Perhaps I’m a child of my time. It seems to me that one expectation people today have is that life is always exciting. That there’s always something happening. Or should be. And if it’s not, then life is disappointing. But, mostly, life isn’t full with exciting things. Mostly, life is about doing what has to be done. Mostly…nothing happens! Maybe I’m wrong. I wonder too if we feel like this with our Christian life. Mostly we want to know that God is present and active. That he is awake and that he will intervene to make our life better. That we’ll be able to see where he is at work and we’ll know what he is doing. When I listen to people pray, that’s often what I hear them articulate. We ask God to be present in ways we can see, and ways we can recognise. But when I look at the Bible, it strikes me that most of the time, nothing happens. What the Bible records happens over an long period of time, some 1500 years! That’s a long time. A long time. When we read it, we tend to read it as if it all happened close together. But there are often long periods of time when, wait for it, nothing happens. Or so it seems! There’s a 400 year gap between the end of the Old Testament and the beginning of the New Testament! Am I saying God is doing nothing in these gaps? No, of course not. We just don’t what he is doing. And in those times, doing what they knew to be right became really important for those following God. And that’s still true. In those weeks when nothing happens, what’s really important is that keep doing what I know to be right, trusting that God is at work even when I don’t know what he is doing and can’t see what he is doing.