A Sense of Direction.

It has to be said that this blog has been lacking any kind of forward momentum.  The truth is I'm never entirely sure what to write in it.  A brief re-cap of some of my earlier posts has reminded me of the stuff I have written in it before and that has revealed a mixture of complete nonsense, minor profundities, TV episode reviews, autobiography and creative writing.  None of these things sit terribly well beside each other, but it seems that I have lost the knack even for such randomness as all that.

So, this blog is currently under review.  I aim to give it a purpose.  It might not be a very strict purpose, but at the very least, I shall try to post in it more often and with more relevance and interest to the casual reader (whoever you might be - my stats currently suggest that you are no-one, by which I mean no offence) and perhaps a greater connection to my more serious blogging effort - Shadow.

This questing for a sense of direction has become something of a theme in my life over the past week.  It seems that every year, around about this time, I suddenly find myself with itchy feet, longing to escape from my job, or my creative doldrums and get out and do something more meaningful, more productive, that sort of thing.  None of this was helped when a friend in work revealed that he was leaving to do just the sort of creative work he has always wanted to do, and he's likely to get paid quiet a bit for it as well.

Well, it was with such thoughts in my mind that I found myself sitting in church yesterday morning listening to a man talk about the work of The Samuel Trust (Sams), a Christian group who aim to work with the young people of disadvantaged areas in Aberdeen.  They were looking for new volunteers, having run so low on them that they had to put one of their clubs on hiatus.  The sermon that morning was about the end of Romans 9 and the whole of Romans 10, in which Paul speaks about the need for people to be told about the gospel and Dominic, our minister, tied this in with the work of Sams as an example of the kind of gospel work Paul would be calling people to now.  I can't remember the exact context, but at one point he spoke of us having 'itchy feet for the gospel' and the use of that term, which I had had in my mind so much over the past week really (and here I borrow the terminology of the esteemed Professor McGrath) - this phrase really resonated with me in that context.

So, long-ish story short, I met with the guy from Sams after the service and have agreed to go along on one of their trips for older kids to see how I find it and whether or not it's something I can do.  I've already worked out that I have the time for it every other Thursday and that I can do some flexible working to make sure I arrive on time.  I'm pretty sure the folks at work would agree to it all.  It all seems so convenient, in fact that I really do feel that it might be a calling.  I guess I'll know for sure when I do it.  It could turn out to be exactly the wrong thing for me to do, but that in itself would be helpful to know as otherwise I'll always be swithering.  Either way, then God has opened a door for me so that I might see beyond it and perhaps find that sense of direction which I seem to have been missing recently.

I'll let you know how it goes.