A life in the day

One of my favourite newspaper columns in the Sunday Times magazine is 'A life in the day' and takes the routine of one day in a persons life and through it tells their story. In this week's, a girl called Alison Balsom who is a world famous trumpeter aged 28 told us of her day. The one thing that she showed me was what it means to truly learn how to do things well.

She writes:

" One Sunday night my parents allowed me to stay up late and watch a documentary about the brilliant Swedish trumpeter Haken Hardenberger. I was hooked. I knew that was what I wanted to do with my life. Later I studied with Haken. He was tough. If I did something that wasn't good enough, he'd stop me and make me start again. I don't train with anyone now because Haken was such a good teacher. I know, when I'm playing, if a passage is wrong. I imagine Haken is there listening, and I go over it again and again until I get it right"

Don't we all yearn for a good teacher. I guess most of us, if you are like me, find it difficult to find the will, the time and the patience to put in the hours to learn to do as the teacher does. Very little comes naturally but it only comes if you are prepared to put in the hours and submit to what the teacher demands. 'Go into strict training' Paul encourages and Alison knows what that means.

Talking of teachers, I have a few thoughts. When I came to study I now realise I had unrealistic expectations. I thought somehow being in an institution with lots of Christains would somehow be different from the world. Somehow, I thought this place would be radically contrasting to big blue chip company I left behind to come here. Yesterday I realized something, something I already knew, but that I had temporarily forgotten. We are all sinners. Messy, selfish, pride-filled, egotistical, unrepentant, self-centred, power-hungry, unforgiving sinners. Each and every one of us. Yesterday, I saw that more clearly than perhaps I have on other days. I do not think I was alone in that revelation.

Isn't it strange that we can spend so much time looking at each others faults? Judging people's choices, views, the things they value and think are important and all the while we fail to examine our own hearts. Yesterday, the pharisee and the tax collector came to mind and it was a reminder of how often I am blind to my own sin yet judgemental of others.

I awoke with a heavy heart. Over the weekend I read a super book called 'Adventure of Faith' , the story of Michael Green's life. In it, he observes a changing tide in the way the people of God need to be trained for a new world and the challenges it presents. He observes, 'The major part of theological training even today is done by lectures, books and examinations....The old-fashioned method of apprentieship has more to commend it as the main way of training, and it could be supplemented by short sandwich courses at a theological college'. Has the tide already turned and we have failed to notice it? Are places such as the one I am in catering to a world that has already disappeared and we have been too busy reading and writing essays to have spotted it. We don't have much time left and maybe we are witnessing the last throws of a world that is in fact long gone. Perhaps we will always be the last to see this.

My readings this morning were 2 Cor 5, and Ezekiel 19. In commenting on these, Don Carson writes for today:

" This is the first nor the last time that a nation or an insititution was destroyed from within. Readers of history may call to mind the Roman Empire, the Russian years under communism, certain local churches, Christian universities, confessional seminaries, and on and on. They know that human institutions can never be so safely constructed that outcomes are gauranteed. For the heart of the human dilemma is so deeply rooted in personal sin that no structure can finally reform it. The lament for Israel's princes becomes a lament for the human race, which desperately needs a solution far deeper and more effective than princes, presidents and structures can ever provide"

Has Alison's trumpet sounded and have we heard it in time...........................