Day twelve

It’s almost 6am and I have been awake for 2.5 hours already. I thought about what John Wesley wrote in his Journal on the 22nd December 1763, when he was 60 years old: “God grant that I may never live to be useless “. Wesley died a few months before his 89th birthday and he was active right to the end, so his prayer was answered positively.

I’ve never prayed that prayer! I’m 63, almost 64.

But what does that prayer mean in an age when we are in favour of assisted suicide?

How do we decide when we are useful and when we are not?

Useful to who?

Do we have to be active to be useful?

I remember in the early days of my Christian life when Selwyn Hughes said that God loves us whatever we do, or don’t do. He said that if we lay in bed for a year God will love us as much at the end of the year as He did at the beginning of the year.

I found that hard to accept 45 years ago.

It’s not so hard to believe just now!

I have been laid aside. I used to be able to preach effectively. I have used the spiritual gifts I have been given, but now I’m at home, exhausted, in pain.

But I am still reading and I’m still working on my “Magnum Opus”; my work on all things apocalyptic. It may prove useful at some point in time.

But as I try to recover from the many sicknesses I currently have, and as I try to get the sleep that I need, do I consider myself useless?

I don’t think so!