That was my subject to speak on tonight at St Mark’s.

The service was informal, planned and led by the youth group who asked me to speak. Tonight they decided to set the church up as a cafe at the front and people were sat around tables drinking and eating as the service began.

As I looked around I thought that this was more of what church should look like. The seating arrangement said ‘we are here to interact, to contribute, to learn from each other’. I feel it looked healthier that rows looking to the front at the ‘above reproach specialist’.

I also thought how very fortunate we are as a church with a vicar who encourages experimentation like this for the young people and others. He has his own set preferences, and yet he allows others to play and find theirs. I think that is such a great example of encouraging and enabling leadership. It certainly contrast with a situation I heard the other day of a Pathfinder leader waiting for over 2 weeks to hear if the group could contribute to a service as they had requested.

Tonight I am glad I am in a church like St Marks.

On to the subject? Well of course, it is a non-sensical title. God is always there. He also promises never to leave or forsake us. He left Jesus (Father, Father why have you forsaken me?)so that he would never have to leave us.

I shared basically that in circumstances it does feel like God has left and is ignoring us. I think n these situations, and looking at Psalm 13, we need to remember that God is there and we need to ‘hang in there’ by being honest with God, others and ourselves. BY this I mean if we are angry we shout at God and tell him, not pretend we are all right when we are struggling.

This is not amazingly comforting, Jesus never said it would be easy but he did promise to stay with us, and when it comes to this it can be useful to remember that it say ‘and it came to pass’ 396 times in the Bible.

WE all have dark valley experiences, and they will ‘come to pass’.