Friday photo: Sacre Coeur

Taken on our honeymoon in Paris - October 1988.

A vision to inspire

I listened to a really good sermon today - by Nicky Gumbel of Holy Trinity Brompton. I hesitated about blogging about it, but given the title of my blog I thought it was kind of appropriate.

It's about 45 minutes long, and I found the second part to be really exciting and energising. It's the type of vision that we need for our churches today.

"I don't want you to be put off by the scale of this vision, in which you're involved."

If only ...

You can find the sermon here.

It’s an ill wind...

It’s been a bit windy here today – severe gales actually!

Our weekly management team meeting over-ran today – making me late leaving for home, and therefore missing tonight’s quarterly church members meeting. (To be honest, I haven’t shed many tears over this.)

The drive home was tricky in places, as cars and lorries were battered by broadsides from the wind.

But the sky was fantastic. I guess that all of the high clouds had been blown away, and the sky was a wonderfully clear blue, melting into a yellow-grey sunset at the horizon. The only blemishes were a few scruffy, grey clouds being chased across the scene by the wild winds. Then I spotted a flash of pink in the sky, and I realised that it was the vapour trail from a jet. It was catching the colour of the sunset – beautiful!!

The image doesn’t do it justice, but it helped me unwind at the end of a long day.

The sacramental path

The Pathways of prayer course has moved on to the sacramental path this week - the idea being that we should consciously meet with God, but also recognise his presence all around us.

Coincidentally, I was reading 1 Cornithians 13 today and it struck me that through regular, instinctive, habitual meeting with God we should be slowly transformed. This will involve growing, learning and un-learning, because as we get to know God better, we will (in a limited way) begin to see ourselves from his perspective. Of course we need to be willing to change, to bend and to be re-shaped.

Heschel puts it better than me:

"Stirred by a yearning after the unattainable, a pious man is not content with being confined to what he is."

And my pathways of prayer doodle has moved on a bit!

When will winter end?

This is not a plaintive cry about grey skies and chill winds.

It’s actually a question that I have asked myself round about this time every year. We grow autumn-fruiting raspberries, and they need to be pruned in late winter. But just when is that? Well, it’s before there’s any new growth – defining things by the absence of something is not entirely helpful. Anyway, pruned they must be.

There’s a logic that says, ‘These are tough plants, you won’t do any harm’. But there’s an equally logical position that says, ‘This is Scotland! You can get snow in late April, so it makes no sense to cut them now’. But if you leave it too late, you run the risk of damaging the new growth.

So why am I boring you with this (assuming anyone’s still reading at this stage)? Well, as I spent a very productive morning sorting out my raspberries, I thought that there were various metaphors and parables emerging.

Sometimes we need to prune things in an apparently harsh way for them to be fruitful – even when this seems counter-intuitive. Acting too late can do more damage than being a wee bit premature.

Pruning alone will probably lead to a decent crop of berries in the late summer/ autumn; but if you also weed thoroughly and provide a mulch of compost, you’re more likely to get a fantastic crop.

Since we garden organically, there’s a real pleasure in mulching with home produced compost, and knowing that the pruned raspberry canes will be shredded and used to mulch our other fruit bushes (blueberry, blackcurrant and bramble) is quite satisfying.

Then there’s the promise of fruitfulness in place of dry, dead canes – albeit with a healthy dose of faith needed.

Finally there’s the benefit of being out in the fresh air for a couple of hours – and feeling physically and spiritually refreshed as a result.

Here’s hoping for a bumper crop from the raspberries and the thoughts that emerged this morning.

Friday photo: consider the iris

iris reticulata 'Harmony'

Getting a reaction

When preparing study sheets for Nurture Group, we usually include a cartoon (preferably one that is relevant to the passage). We're just starting a series looking at Daniel and The Fish Wife found this one for this week's sheet. Thanks to Reverend Fun.

Wouldn't it be great if our behaviour as Christians generated a similar response from our contemporaries!! At times it would be an improvement if they even noticed us!