The best we can with what we have

It's late. It's quiet. The only sound besides the clicking of my laptop keys is the swish-swish of the dishwasher at the other end of the house: my faithful servant doing the washing-up after dinner.

The expected storm didn't come to much here: quite a lot of rain (starting nice and gently, which the farmers will be grateful for) and a little bit of wind in the very early hours of this morning, but nothing like the savagery forecasters were predicting - not here at least. The Far North had a pretty bad time of it, and lovely Paihia that I saw two weeks ago is very soggy now.

It's funny: Friday night I had that feeling of impending doom, and the storm turned out to be not nearly as bad as I thought it would be. Today in church was much the same: the newly re-formed choir sang (all five of us) and the positive comments were overwhelming. I had that feeling of impending doom for the last couple of months, praying and working to get the choir up and running, and now we've sung a service for the first time (only hymns and communion songs, not a motet or liturgy yet) it's less about impending doom and more about doing the best we can with what we have.

I have always been a firm believer that we should give God the best of our abilities, particularly when it comes to liturgy, and it felt very satisfying singing praise again. Today we had the readings of the Transfiguration in Lent (although the Feast of the Transfiguration isn't until 6 August), which has always seemed to me to be a picture of what happens when give the best we can to God: somehow it becomes enough. Like the boy who trusted his lunch of two buns and a few tiny fish to Jesus, somehow it became enough to feed a whole lot of people; today, the best we could give was five singers and a pianist making beautiful harmonies for God. The best we could. And it was enough.