God’s guidance – are we truly prepared to do anything for Him?
I accept that there are times when God doesn’t mind a bit which of two or more choices you take, but frequently He does mind and our prayer of “Thy will be done” is vital. The Holy Spirit must always be asked “Do you want me to do this or go there; please show me!”.
For my first job after ordination, circumstances dictated that it would be somewhere in the Diocese of Carlisle, as they had first accepted me for training and then provided £20 a year towards the cost of my training.
After the third year in Leeds we went on to the College of the Resurrection at Mirfield for a two-year theological course.
During our final year we had to find a first job, a sort of apprenticeship in the Anglican church called a curacy. This means going to a parish that is allowed to have a curate, and learning how to be a good priest by working with the parish vicar (often also known as a rector). Consequently, my prayer during my final year was, “Lord, please show me where you want me to go!”
To explain how He showed me where to go, I must take you back to my first year in Leeds.
It happened that a Carlisle man who was assistant priest under Ian Pettit at St. Wilfred’s Church, Halton, Leeds, invited me over to tea one day, purely because I was a fellow-Cumbrian and he knew my Father slightly. While there I secretly thought to myself, “Of all the clergy I have ever met there is no-one I would rather work with than this Robert Nelson”.
Nobody knew what I thought.
Five years later, in the December before I was due to be ordained, there came “out of the blue” a letter which said “You may be surprised to hear from me, but I have calculated that you will probably be ordained at next Trinity-tide (early June), and I would like you to consider coming to be my curate here.”
The place was St. Matthews’, Barrow-in-Furness, and the writer was Bobby Nelson!
A visit to the parish and an interview with the Bishop of Carlisle confirmed that that was where I was to begin.
In those days, (the late 1940s), it was customary to stay only three or so years in one’s first post and then move to a second curacy.
In my case, however, the challenge of starting up a ministry at the Mission Church in the Schneider and Ormsgill estate resulted in my staying for nearly six years.
By that time, Dilys and I were married and had our first baby.
About the time Bobby Nelson accepted the work of Rector of the parish of our Lady and St. Nicholas in Liverpool, our parish in Barrow-in-Furness could not pay us enough money for the three of us to live on. It was time for us to move on to another parish elsewhere in the country.
After one temporary and one longer stay in furnished rooms we had moved to a second floor flat which was approached by a small winding staircase. On the landing was a dormer-type window providing a space for a gas cooker and I had made a working table from two boards and two orange boxes.
On one side was a bedroom, on the other a large living room. Water had to be obtained from the first floor, where there was the household bathroom. The owner did not like the idea of baby’s nappies being washed in the hand-basin or bath, so a journey down through the kitchen (inhabited by a hunch-back housekeeper), had to be made for this daily need.
The crack in the wall over our fire place was so big that I had covered it with a large coloured map of Carlisle Diocese. If baby Gillian was crying, I would show her the map and the colours seemed to take her attention and calm her down.
In the various circumstances which I have described, it was again a time when we had been praying, “Lord, show us where you want us to go”, but nothing happened.
Well, not until one day when the baby and I were looking at the map and Dilys said, ‘Where would you be willing to go?”
I thought for a moment and then said, “Anywhere except the London area. I couldn’t stand working in London”.
The very next morning came a letter inviting me to consider working in Downham, South London, in the Diocese of Southwark!
Pointers to the future are not always as clear as the examples I have given and often it is harder to decide that the answer on a possible move is “No” than when the response might be “Yes”.
to be continued
