Ramble for Kirwan Uniting Church Keeping in Touch pew sheet 9 January 2022

I should have got on with this Ramble sooner. Like yesterday. Or at least earlier today. The Devil sent a Test Match along to divert me from the Lord’s work. This is open on my iMac, while the cricket is on my iPad alongside it. It’s been like that since play started (after rain, sent alike on the just and unjust) yesterday morning. I’ve been toggling between a sermon, Ramble, and cricket.There have been stars, as usual. Khawaja, who should have been opening for the past couple of seasons if form and stylistic stroke-play were criteria rather than selectors’ irrational whims, scored a classy 137. This morning, geriatric Scott Boland took two important wickets and showed youngsters how a nagging stump to stump line brings deserved rewards. Pat Cummings is displaying seriously impressive captaincy as well as fast bowling.

But cricket is a team game. A catch goes to a bowler’s credit, but it’s made by a fielder. Stopping runs by athletic fielding isn’t recorded anywhere in statistics, but is vital to keeping an opposition’s score down. A batter depends on communication and trust with his/her partner at the other end.

The bible is full of stories of people who are on the face of it, bit players. Unnamed widows who feed a superstar prophet. Unnamed people who bring their friends to Jesus or to the apostles. Aged temple workers who have spent a lifetime in prayer that God will send his promised Messiah. God has arranged the story of salvation so that these anonymous or humble people are vital to it. The story of Kirwan Uniting isn’t of a preacher up the front, but of a faithful team who worship, welcome, work, pray, give, cook, serve, visit. These are, as St Paul puts it in Ephesians 4, “… works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.” You might not consider yourself a superstar, but in God’s economy of salvation you’re indispensable to the team.

 

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