It is late at night. It would be wiser of me to leave posting this blog until tomorow to ensure more people read it, but tomorrow has got me thinking. I head off for some routine tests at the hospital and then a week from now have a consultant’s appointment. A doctor in our congregation gave me this good advice over a year ago: “When a consultant or a doctor asks you, ‘How are you?’, they are not just extending a greeting! They really want to know and need you to tell them.” Being a typical male, I really needed to hear that obvious truth and since then have tried not to give an evasive, polite or useless one word answer in response to that question when it comes from a doctor or a consultant: “Fine.” I try and remember now what is truly behind the question.

Thinking of that, I was remembering Dr. Jack Deere saying that when God walked in the garden and called out “Adam, where are you?”, He was not asking for directions! There is more to the question than that, for after all you don’t need to tell an omniscient God where anybody is!

“Where are you?” I guess there is a link with the thought of yesterday’s blog about keeping in step with the Holy Spirit. I found myself today feeling sad about people I have known over the years who once did exactly that, but something happened. There is probably no greater sadness for a pastor.  Did they lost their first love? Were they ever born of the Spirit? Did they begin with the Spirit but through some spiritual influence or other, return to the flesh or even to a fleshly religion – a religion of rules, and formalism with no living relationship with the  Life-Reorganising-Disturber-of-false-peace-and-quiet Holy Spirit? I don’t know, and fortunately it is not for me to say, but it is sad. Indeed it is more than that. It is tragic. I feel so bad not only when I think of such people but even more  so when I meet them as I do from time to time. I find it difficult to know what to say to them….

“Is Kenny  thinking of me when he writes that?” Well actually I am thinking of about 8 people by name. You might well be one of them but please don’t write and ask if you are one of the 8!

I leave you and myself with this  simple yet cavernously deep question found on the lips of God Himself: “Where are you?” Perhaps through this blog, deep will call to deep.

Kenny