Suffering and Healing

A more peaceful day today. Working in Salisbury meant a more leisurely start to the morning and arriving at the office at just after 8 a.m. meant I could get quite a bit done before my first meeting at 10 a.m. The meeting was difficult but successful in getting instructions to settle what would be a difficult case in Manchester if we went ahead. Sara and I attended a Christian Fellowship Meeting in the Recreation Wing of the office with fellow Christian employees. We discussed several readings from Hebrews concerned with suffering and why Christ was incarnate. The atmosphere of uncertainty pervades everything in the office at the moment and our Claims Department were told that further necessary savings would mean more redundancies. Nobody feels that their job is safe and many worry that severance terms will be eroded before their turn comes. After work I managed to get Tom's mobile phone sorted (he needed more credit on his pay-as-you-go phone) as he and I are going to Wembley tomorrow for the England v. Slovakia match and I need to know that he can contact me (and I him) if we get separated in the crowd. Sara had baked some lovely cherry cup cakes when I got back home - they were still warm and got demolished very quickly. Tonight was the penultimate Alpha Course meeting when we discussed healing - spiritual and physical. A tricky subject but one which once more Nicky Gumbel was able to cover with his unique style of confident presentation. Afterwards, the group had some difficulty in grasping why not all requests for healing are successful. I thought of Dad and wondered if we could have prayed harder and also whether our prayers did go answered with him now at peace. Sarah M, who is a nurse, recounted some of her experiences in tending for the terminal ill and giving them comfort in their last moments when their relatives could not be there. Perhaps we are not meant to know why some are healed and others aren't. Arriving home, Sara had started watching her Desperate Housewives' fest having bought off ebay the whole of the first two series - about six DVDs!! . It was not a time for discussion or disturbance as when she is watching this programme nothing must come between her and the TV. I was free, therefore, to work on my laptop and write up this blog. I am looking forward to tomorrow and seeing my first live England soccer international at Wembley. The St. George's flag will be flying prominently on our flagpole. We have seats in the Wembley Gold Club so we should have an excellent view and I will need to know what the dress code will be.