Fullness of Time

What a beautiful phrase, hey? We have such strange ideas about time, killing it, converting it to money, telling it, managing it, spending it. But time fills up, slowly, bit by bit until the time comes and then God says that time is full. And when time is full, something happens. Something good.

I started teaching the little monsters at Nyasa Junior Academy how to sing this month. Not well-behaved enough to be teachable, but not rough enough to get seriously tough with, I’ve spent the month trying to claw some order out of the anarchy that is 6&7 yr olds. I’m not sure I’m winning yet, but the honour of being invited to teach at a Muslim-run school keeps me in the game.

A friend informs me that I’m on the timetable at Phoenix school again this term, which is nice to know, because no-one actually contacted me to ask if I’d like to be. But I would, so I guess that’s ok.

Private lessons are becoming my down-time now, because I’ve been doing them for 6 months so I have some sense of what goes on in them. There’s a certain satisfaction to having every single hour of my teaching time taken by a willing and progressing student.

The radio show at Capital, ‘The Spirit of Music’, has now been aired 2 out of 3 times we’ve recorded it, amid controversy over the quality of my home-recordings, the hassle of actually getting a studio technician organised to record in the studio and the general lack of communication between Capital and myself. The show is pre-recorded, and features 6 or 7 tracks of ‘international music’ (i.e. what I normally listen to) tied together by a theme…God, sex, angels’n’demons, death etc. I heard it play for the first time this week, and it actually sounded ok. The miracle is that they actually played it, though, because last week they decided to scrap it at the last minute and not tell me.

Two of the young people at the church, Eddie and Reuben, have now had turns at MCing Sunday meetings and sorting the music, both fairly successfully. We have a new guitarist in church, and one of the street kids (Gray – one of many homeless kids/runaways who congregate at CPC on Sunday mornings) had his debut on the drums this week, which was really good to see. Despite my many logistical ineptitudes, the worship team training day was an awesome success, like last time.

The young people’s group at the church is finally morphing out the shape it’s been in for 5 years (all the ‘young people’ were 25+ when I arrived). The Bible studies have stopped, because they tended to turn into dusty-crusty debates where one or two older guys soliloquised for longer than any of us thought necessary. Instead we have pizza at a fast-food place (eyes right) on Wednesdays and films on Sunday afternoons.

The guys from Kalibu have largely disappeared since they had a team of attractive young ladies from Finland turn up a fortnight ago, but Yorick still drops by about once a week to take me out on the back of his new 650cc BMW.

My time is full of all these things. But these things are just filling time. In the fullness of time, through or despite every bit of energy I can chuck into Blantyre/church/my friends, God’s going to move. He is. Is he? Definitely. But where are the signs? Honestly…I’m not sure. There are a few signs in my heart, but who trusts their own heart? There are a few signs in my friends, but who’s to say they’re conclusive? I just know it.

Watch this space.

And while I’m watching, you’ll find me at the Muslim school, in the rented church building, at the fast-food joint, and on the back of the BMW.