Dear Everybody,

I've got a small picture – plus quote – on the study wall at the manse, which was taken from a copy of “Life and Work” magazine about twenty years ago. It used to be on one of my kitchen cupboards, and it’s survived the move through to Cumbernauld.

It shows two people, in cartoon form – one of them is very smartly dressed (suspiciously like a minister or pastor), and has a Bible in his hand. Mouth open and arms outstretched, his speech bubble reads “Hear my prayer!” The other one is standing at a kitchen sink, which is full of dishes and soap suds: his speech bubble reads “Hullo,God.”

But it’s the commentary to the picture which originally attracted me, and which I still believe to be true. Opposite the preacher it says “We sometimes think that God hears big people before small people....” Then, lower down, and opposite the man washing up, it reads “...it’s the other way round.”

As we start back to a new session in church life and we encounter new challenges, let’s give heartfelt thanks for the “wee folk” – the ones who explain themselves by saying “Oh, I'm just a...” or those struggling with what Elaine C Smith describes as a dose of Scottish “not-good-enough-ness”, or the people in “big jobs” who struggle with doubt in their own abilities.

For of such is the kingdom of heaven, no less – all through the Old Testament, the great prophets were called by God out of obscurity; they were self-confessed “wee folk.” And Jesus picked his disciples, not from the Great and the Good of his day, but from a raggedy bunch of terribly human, getting-lots–wrong people.

There’s LOTS for us to be doing in this coming session. – in Parish Appraisal, Project Rock, fetes and fayres, fundraising and the all important task of communicating God’s love to the communities we serve.

And He works, for the most part, through “wee folk.”
Like us.

God bless,
Catriona

© Cumbernauld Old Parish Church of Scotland; Registered Scottish Charity SC000877