Routine and structure

MOST of us will run our lives on a series of events and activities punctuating them.

Those things that are important to us get a space in the diary: F1, Rovers games, holidays, evenings out with friends or family.

Perhaps for some of you there is delight at the return of Britain’s Got Talent or the Eurovision song contest, although I think many of us are now watching on demand.

The weather is of course breaking into a new summer season, and my caravan has already been taken out for its first holiday of the year, with many more already in the diary.

When I look at how my life is punctuated, I see how important it is to have a pattern or a routine.

I love my job, yet still I need my holidays - not least because they usually fall following the busiest times at church. I love the winter but I know the summer will come.

Ecclesiastes tells us: "For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven: a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted; a time to break down, and a time to build up; a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing; a time to seek, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to throw away."

I think most of us will see that there are things that punctuate our lives, patterns and routines. Perhaps we can even think of things we used to do and do not any more? Was it time to keep and we threw away? Is it time to seek and we choose to lose?

On the whole, the western world has abandoned God.

It is perhaps most prevalent in the UK. My personal view is many people have thrown away something they needed. People have stopped seeking and now the faith of the nation is suffering and with it, much of the joy and happiness.

Hope is being placed in the wrong places and the wrong people.

I like to view this as the winter of the Christian faith in the country and I long for the new shoots of spring to be abundant.

I long to see the flourishing in people that God can bring and part of my job is to be involved in seeing that happen. Have we reached the season where it is time for you to seek? Is it time you went back to church? I hope you will make space in your diary for God and make prayer part of your routine.