Friends

It’s been a stressful week at the manse, for reasons with which I will not bore you. However, one of my habits when things are stressful is to reach for one of my vintage copies of “The Friendship Book of Francis Gay”. There’s something that I find very comforting about these terribly old fashioned “thoughts for the day” written by a long-gone Methodist. Today, I pulled down my oldest copy which is from 1950 and read the following story which I found very comforting and which I hope you do too.

Just after the first world war, a Yorkshireman called Eli came back from fighting overseas to his old job in a woollen mill. Twelve months later the mill closed down and Eli was out of work.

The news reached him at noon one Saturday. Being a Methodist local preacher, he was to take a service the following Sunday evening. He intended preaching on the line of a famous hymn: “God Moves in a Mysterious Way”.

“It’s no good, Annie,” he told his wife. “This news has knocked me out. I can’t preach tomorrow.”

“But you will, lad,” said Annie.

Because she insisted, Eli did.

After the service a stranger talked with him, and before ten that Sunday evening, Eli (who knew nothing of the motor trade, then in its infancy) found himself manager of a new garage.

“It’s a wise man who does as his wife tells him,” Eli maintained; and then: “And God does move in mysterious ways His wonders to perform.”

This time of year, when there seem to be so many funerals and weather and health are not supportive of joyful feelings, it’s worth remembering that verse that many of you will have memorised at Sunday School: “And we know that God works all things together for good for them that love God and are called according to his purposes.”

May you know the truth of that this week as we continue to remember that in all things, however difficult, God is with us in love and sends his Holy Spirit to sit with us to comfort and guide.

God bless, Vicci