![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Solomon In All His Glory
In Quakerism when you stand up to speak in the otherwise silent Meeting they call it Ministry, It feels odd. I mean, I'm just some bloke standing up to read something from the Bible or- as once was the case- Wordsworth's Immortality Ode. I don't think of it as ministry.
Perhaps I should.
I stand up and speak more often than most, but then I have the skills. I know the Bible (and my Wordsworth, Eliot, Yeats etc...) and while I wasn't ever much of an actor I'm quite good at speechifying and reading aloud.
I leafed through the New Testament at the beginning of Meeting. A passage from Luke stood out. I wasn't sure why; because it didn't deal with anything that was particularly on my mind. I leafed some more and the parallel text from Matthew snagged my attention. I thought of an intro to the material and worked at simplifying it.
I didn't really want to stand up and deliver what I had to say. I didn't see what its application was and I'm always afraid of seeming to be showing off- but that worry is also to do with ego. And I was being nagged at. Nag, nag, nag...
The text was Luke 12, 22 and following, down to the bit about the lilies of the field and Solomon in all his glory.
At the close of the Meeting the guy who was sitting next to me turned and thanked me and said that Luke 12 was exactly what he needed to hear.
As Ailz said afterwards, your Ministry may not be anything to do with you but entirely for somebody else.
Perhaps I should.
I stand up and speak more often than most, but then I have the skills. I know the Bible (and my Wordsworth, Eliot, Yeats etc...) and while I wasn't ever much of an actor I'm quite good at speechifying and reading aloud.
I leafed through the New Testament at the beginning of Meeting. A passage from Luke stood out. I wasn't sure why; because it didn't deal with anything that was particularly on my mind. I leafed some more and the parallel text from Matthew snagged my attention. I thought of an intro to the material and worked at simplifying it.
I didn't really want to stand up and deliver what I had to say. I didn't see what its application was and I'm always afraid of seeming to be showing off- but that worry is also to do with ego. And I was being nagged at. Nag, nag, nag...
The text was Luke 12, 22 and following, down to the bit about the lilies of the field and Solomon in all his glory.
At the close of the Meeting the guy who was sitting next to me turned and thanked me and said that Luke 12 was exactly what he needed to hear.
As Ailz said afterwards, your Ministry may not be anything to do with you but entirely for somebody else.
no subject
no subject