What do we really want to do?

Several decisions this week in the wardening business, all at least involving the question of where should we spend our efforts when there is so much that could be done lying so close to hand. Not an unusual experience, I have to confess, whether at work or at home or at church. As far as I can see, the only way through involves trying to find honest answers to two questions: (1) "what do we really want to do?" and (2) "what would be the best way of achieving that?".

Very tempting in a busy world to skip over question (1) and go straight to question (2). But how does one know what is best without figuring out the direction in which one really wants to go? That way exhaustion lies ... there's always another task that someone somewhere wants you to do.

So we tried the questions out at Sunday family lunch. Interesting exercise: what is a given church service really for? Easy answers include "to worship God" -- but the Bible tells us that our whole lives are meant to be worship, and worship lies as much out of church, in not letting the world squeeze us into its mould, as in church singing songs. Or, "to nurture our children in faith" -- but how can that be an end in itself, unless we demonstrate in our own lives to our children that faith is something worth living for? One could ask, "what would Jesus do?", and that's a good idea -- but it doesn't necessarily go in a comfortable direction; the follow-up to our Gospel reading of the day sees Jesus more-or-less violently chucked out of his synagogue because they didn't like his sermon. I've got my own ideas about what some of our church services are really for, but that's just me. So I'll be waiting and listening to see what others say, because sometimes one can hear the divine voice far clearer in others' voices than in one's own imaginings.

Anyway, as wardens we found we could make some progress on our particular decisions by sketching some provisional answers to "what do we really want to do?", and then fixing on a couple of tentative shots at "what would be the best way of achieving that?", after which some practical decisions seemed to make themselves. But I think we'll be coming back to these basic questions quite frequently.