Use setbacks to become better people

For almost three years now, I have been looking after two churches in Motherwell who don’t currently have a minister.

Their minister moved to another parish and, due to the fact that throughout the national church we are in a period of consultation about reducing the number of ministers and churches, it is unlikely they will be able to have their own minister.

I’m fortunate to have a locum in place who conducts the worship every week and who deals with pastoral matters like funerals.

There are, however, many occasions where it must be me who presides over things.

Sunday past, there was a meeting of one of the congregations immediately after the church service.

My service in East Kilbride begins at 11am, but their one begins at 11.30am.

That meant that I could finish my service, then drive over to Motherwell, and be there for their service ending around 12.15pm.

I would then be able to chair the business meeting.

Unfortunately, I hadn’t factored in the fact that Motherwell Football team were playing at 12.30 that day. Oh dear!

My knowledge of Motherwell is pretty scant, but I do know how to drive from East Kilbride to each of the churches, but I only know the route which goes up Airbles Road.

As soon as I turned onto it, I knew I was in for a long wait, for it was nose to tail with cars.

I tried typing an alternative route into my sat-nav, but every street was the same. In the end I just phoned ahead and told them I would be late.

As I sat in the traffic jam, I started to think how journeys are a bit like life itself.

We travel through each day of our lives, and we look forward to what we hope lies ahead of us. We enjoy the good times we have in the present, and of course we all have our memories of things that have happened in the past.

Yet no matter how carefully we plan our journey through life, no matter what our hopes and dreams are, sometimes we get caught by surprise because things happen to each and every one of us that we don’t plan for, or don’t expect.

It might be an illness, or a break down of a relationship, or a situation in our workplace, but we get taken by surprise at some points in our journey of life.

So, what do we do when these setbacks appear? Like me in the traffic jam, I think that we can trust that things will come to pass.

While I was delayed in my journey, I knew that I would eventually reach my destination. I eventually trusted in the satnav and discovered parts of Motherwell that I didn’t know existed. So too might our journey through life take us into uncharted waters.

When setbacks happen in life, which will happen to all of us, maybe we can use them to become better people.