Christmas Service - Cornbank St James School

Yesterday morning Stewart said to me "Could you drive me to school?".

Couldn't the boy see I was busy - trying to find the coffee somewhere in the back of the cupboard where my wife had hidden it - it's never where I think it's supposed to be!

Last time I had checked outside it hadn't seemed a particularly dreich day so I said something firm, yet loving, along the lines of: "No - you stupid, lazy boy, walk to school like you always do".

Now equipped with a hot cup of coffee I walked into the living room and caught a glimpse of the sort of day that my step-son had just trudged off into muttering something under his breath. My goodness, but wasn't it an awful day. I spent the rest of the morning feeling like a miserable offender.

Anyway - water under the bridge. The boy proved to be solid drip-dry citizen and waved off my abject apologies when he got home that afternoon.

We did have a problem though. There were 300 small children from one of the Primary Schools where I am chaplain who were due to trudge from Cornbank St James Primary to the Church for their Christmas service the next morning (today - Friday). And the weather was not cooperating. The head teacher and I had played email tag about whether the service would take place at the Church or at the School - it would depend on the weather. This was a departure for us. I've always gone there for assemblies and class visits and a visit to the Church hadn't taken place in anybody's memory for a very long time. We had a lot invested in this.

A lot of preparation had gone into this morning's service. We have one active teacher at Cornbank and one retired teacher in our congregation and the active teacher had spent quite a bit of time planning the service. We'd laid out a zillion chairs late last night and predicted how many little backsides we could accomodate in the pews. We'd enlisted the organist and appointed a "fire marshall" for the event. There'd been a crisis with the heating during the week and a heating engineer had to be wept with, whined at and otherwise cajoled to get the boiler working again properly before the service. It would have been awful if the children could not have safely walked in groups the third of a mile to the Church and the service hadn't been able to go ahead as planned.

While the weather was terrible during the day, I did walk out last night and see some stars. This morning the horizon was a nice pink colour. We were fine. The service was great - good readers, carols sung in full voice and the P5 recorder group acquitted themselves admirably in their rendition of We Three Kings. Within an hour following the service and the children's trudge back up to the school (with the police blocking the road so that they could get back safely) the weather closed in and it's presently blowing a hooley out there.

I never take responsibility for the weather even though the heathen joke with me about it all the time. "The rain falls on the righteous and the unrighteous", I always say.

Yeah, yeah, I know all that. Nonetheless......

Thank you Jesus.