A Cambridge God Adventure* 60) Cut out but a silver lining

(*please skip if you have not been following this story).  I need to avoid self-pity (!) but my weeks of illness led into a serious bout of pneumonia and then extreme weakness with headaches. Eventually a consultant at Addenbrookes diagnosed it as ME.  I was locked into ten weeks of what turned out to be my first experience of depression.  During this time my dear friend and senior deacon Jim Adam died and I remember stumbling over words for his funeral service as Nigel wrote them down by my bedside.  How I was to miss this spiritual giant.

Laid low, I recalled C.H. Spurgeon commenting: Remember that it is God who accomplishes the work that He can continue to do without my help, and that He will be able to make out with other means whenever he wants to cut me out. Nobody likes to be cut out!  After several weeks I crept into the gallery for morning worship and slipped away during the last hymn.

When I did return someone said to me: 'The silver lining of your illness is that more of us have been involved in everything.'  The church was going full throttle.  Strange connections were being made. Earlier at one of our day conferences several people had identified the unemployed as a group we could serve.  Early in my illness we learned that the government was now inviting churches to host Job Clubs - clubs where longer-term unemployed people were counselled and helped to find employment.  Could this belong within our vision to serve the city? From my bed, I was thrilled to hear about church leaders applying for a job club,then being accepted and even appointing our first Director, Roy Toseland, who became a member of the church team.

At my first prayer meeting back from illness (April 7th) we met in the same room as the new Job Club, with their posters already on the walls. One of the recorded prayers that night reads: For Roy Toseland and the Job Club and the ten people beginning next Monday! Members of the Job Club, including some of our own fellowship, became included in our prayer ministry as the months rolled by.  Indeed, so successful was our club in finding employment that we were granted a second club to run simultaneously and a cabinet minister paid an official visit. Did it make a difference that a praying church was running these clubs?  It certainly seemed so!

Because the new building was attached to the church sanctuary builders needed to break into its top wall where they discovered dry rot which immediately pushed the cost up another  £50,000.  But counterbalancing such disappointments was continued giving. In the prayer diary (May 5 1987) I note  £2,000 given today!.  Trusts were also proving helpfully supportive.  I still felt far from my best but there was so much to look forward to. Actually, we had a wonderful burst of Summer sunshine coming.