Family Service Sunday 24th August – led by Lilian Evans
Lilian’s Services have a certain plasticity about them. Anecdotes from her lifelong involvement with the church pop up at unexpected moments, giving depth to the life of someone who really cares about her calling.
The first reading From Jeremiah 1 was about God calling Jeremiah to be a prophet, and his sense of unfitness for the task. Our image of Old Testament prophets might be of crusty old men but some of them were young people when God called them to be prophets.
We got no clues on how many of us had been to Sunday school when we were so (knee) high. Lilian certainly had (in Watford) and, after the first two hymns, all the children had had to get up and walk down the road to the church hall for Sunday school, where she’d learnt some amazing choruses.
One of them – COME – had stuck in her mind. Four letters; C for children, O for old people, M for middle-aged, and E for everybody. Everybody to come to Jesus! She remembered children saying to their teachers, “Can we be Christians?” Could a child be a Christian? How old did we think someone had to be before they could become a Christian, a church member, or an Elder?
We learned that Lilian had become an Elder at an early age (more like a Younger). “When do you stop being young and start being old”, she asked? She’d decided to remain middle-aged forever – that lovely group in the middle, even though (or perhaps because) they quite often had lots of things to do, with children, young people, teenagers, growing up in the family.
God said that everybody was able to come to Jesus.
Isiah 58 sparked a memory of another of those choruses (with actions – pew-based aerobics) that Lilian had hung onto over the years. “My God is so big, so strong, and so mighty. There’s nothing my God cannot do. My God is so big, so strong, and so mighty. There’s nothing my God cannot do. The mountains are his. The oceans are his. The sky is his handiwork, too. My God is so big, so strong, and so mighty. There’s nothing my God cannot do!”
Lilian believed that God had created her and made her in his image. God had created us and made us in his image. And he called us with purpose and intent, to trust that when He sent us out, He’d equip and empower us. “ The Lord is with me, placing His words in my mouth. May I trust Him and walk obediently with Him”.
Was anyone amongst us a prophet, was anyone being called out in the night? Was anyone going around and speaking to others? A prophet just told people what God was saying to them. It could be anyone who gave us advice. It could be people in authority, like teachers, policemen, or doctors and nurses – or parents, and relatives both older and sometimes younger. What they had in common was that when they spoke God’s Word. God kept them safe, and He guided them, and us, in faith.
We could all take part in some way, helping people to understand that Jesus was our Lord. And that he reaches out and calls other people to him.
Potters Bar United Reformed Church 