Finite resources

can be frustrating - as I'm finding as my battered body uses energy to heal that I thought was mine to use on projects that seemed to be important. I'm learning slowly.
I've decided that if the keeping of a good Lent is solely dependent on the vicar getting lovely Lenten liturgies planned & printed we might have to make do with a less "perfect" Lent (I do know that it isn't, btw...honestly I do).
I've realised that though it is one heck of a nuisance for the poor Dufflepud to have to run the house & walk the dogs Monday to Friday, it probably won't do him lasting damage, & that though I may contribute the odd good idea to assorted groups in the parish & beyond, ther's not alot of pont in killing myself to get to meetings if my presence is all I can offer because the effort of getting there has left me with no creativity at all.
I certainly don't like it, but I am reluctantly beginning to grasp some important stuff, so maybe, just maybe, there may in the end be some good outcomes from this unplanned Lenten discipline.

All of this clarified for me as I read a wonderful article about the Church & the Credit Crunch over on Thinking Anglicans. I've come across the writer, Meg Gilley, on a couple of rather good preaching lists I belong to, and her sermons are always first rate. Here she is, discerning God amid the all too finite resources of a dwindling C of E in a financial crisis - the whole piece is well worth reading.

Money is a language. God will speak to us in whatever language we are able to listen. If there is a crisis with money, what is God saying? When I consider the Financial Crisis on a theological level (and of course it can and must be read on other levels as well), I hear a condemnation of our society’s love of money and insatiable appetites that must be satisfied now. We do need to repent and rebuild our infrastructure on better values. Money also asks questions of the church about its priorities. In a crisis, money tells us that we can’t do what we thought we wanted to do, and maybe we need to go back to think and pray about what it is that we are called to do in this place, at this time. It may be that we need to do less of something that is good in order to do another thing that is better.

Isn't that fab?. I'm trying to read it on two levels - as I deal with my own sense of material/financial insecurity (3 children still in various forms of education & a husband whose work is based on one of the ultimate inessentials, the antique clock) & also as I struggle with the limited enery that looks set to be my portion for a while yet

In a crisis, ........tells us that we can’t do what we thought we wanted to do, and maybe we need to go back to think and pray about what it is that we are called to do in this place, at this time.

I'm trying, really I am.