A preacher returns to harness

As a preacher, I am feeling out of touch. A period of compassionate leave means that I have not preached for some five weeks. The journey from study to pulpit/ lectern is always both long and uphill, but today it seems a little longer. I have always maintained that the day I stop feeling nervous about preaching is the day I shall stop doing it. As preachers, our nerves keep us in our place – reminding us that we are but fragile instruments in the hand of a greater musician. If a little nervous flutter serves to remind us that we cannot bring an eternal word into a temporal situation unaided, then so be it.

On this particular occasion, I shall return to preaching by means of a funeral and thanksgiving service on Tuesday. These can be amongst the preacher’s toughest challenges, I find. One the one hand, hope is to be painted in all its bright colours, but on the other, the sadness is acute. Both sentimentality and opportunistic challenge are to be avoided with equal care. The address at a funeral or thanksgiving must look both backwards to a life lived and forwards to an eternity anticipated.  In short – I need help!

On Wednesday evening I was walking along the seafront in Sheringham, North Norfolk, when I watched the man in the picture below. With apparently effortless ease he was paragliding above the beach, occasionally turning in circles amongst the gulls who shared the sky with him. Of course, it wasn’t effortless at all. He doubtless had to keep constant watch on his height and position, as well as ‘reading’ the thermals to keep him airborne. To the watchers, like me, it was graceful and effortless, to him it was a different story.

Preaching is never effortless, but like the sunset flight it is worth it!