What is Your Treasure?

Nice to be back in Blog Land!!! I have just not quite made it for a few weeks and my photography course has always won. But that is finished now and the prodigal returns.

If you were at Ashley on Saturday (payer meeting) or Sunday (morning service) you would have heard that I met a man on train whose passion was carp fishing and I spent a happy hour learning about it. There is his picture cuddling up to his treasure.

I am fascinated but what makes a person have a passion for something and it always reminds me of Jesus and the parable of the treasure in field (Matthew 13: 44). The man sold all he had for the treasure.

Jesus seems to have always wanted people of passion around him. It is as though he can sort out the mistakes we make and the hang ups we have as long as there is passion there. Is that why he persevered with the apostle Peter? He was a fisherman too!!!

Passion gives us energy and is life giving.

I took a picture of these in St Albans Cathedral hanging over the bookshop area. I thought they were a good image of passion.

Scary but energising

A Passion for quotations

I have a bit of a passion for quotations. I really enjoy reading thoughtful and concise sentences that contain so much in so few words. Poems and song lyrics come into the same category. One of my favourite poems at the moment, by a poet called Hafiz is:

Now
That
All your worry
Has proved such an
Unlucrative
Business,
Why
Not
Find a better
Job.

For some strange reason I don't; I go over and over the same ground and it is clearly ridiculous. Reading things like this can bring me back to God because they are a bit of sanity when I am losing my perspective.

A smiling God

The Lord bless you and keep you:
the Lord make his face shine upon you
and be gracious to you;
the Lord turn his face towards you
and give you peace.
Numbers 6:24-26

Thanks to Shaun C for the forwarding the photo

Trust in me

The answer to the teaser below (27 June) was trust. Our daily challenge as Christians is to continue to trust in God whatever happens to us or those around us. Hopefully this weeks talk (available as a podcast - see links on the right)will help you in putting your trust in God, preparing it helped me a lot. Below is the slide show that went with the talk and I have also posted the extract from Phillip Yancey's book which I think is an extremely helpful way of picturing how we should trust in God.


In his book "Fearfully and Wonderfully Made," Philip Yancey says:
A certain bridge in South America consists of interlocking vines supporting a precariously swinging platform hundreds of feet above a river. I know the bridge has supported hundreds of people over many years, and as I stand at the edge of the chasm I can see people confidently crossing the bridge. The engineer in me wants to weigh all the factors: measure the stress tolerances of the vines, test the wood for termites, survey all the bridges in the area for one that might be stronger. I could spend a lifetime determining whether the bridge is fully trustworthy. But eventually, if I really want to cross, I must take a step. When I put my weight on that bridge and walk across, even though my heart is pounding and my knees are shaking, I am making a statement-declaring my position.
In the Christian world I sometimes must live like this, making choices which contain inherent uncertainty. If I wait for all the evidence to be in, for everything to be settled, I'll never move. Often I have had to act on the basis of the bones of the Christian faith, before those bones were fully formed in me and before I understood the reason for their existence.
Bone is hard, but it is alive. If the bones of faith do not continue to grow, they will soon become dead skeletons.

A teaser

Looking at the picture below can you guess what I might be talking about on Sunday?
Answers in the comment section.

It's that picture again

I keep coming back to this picture; it says something to me about the power God has to cut through the rock that is me and my stubborn ways.
The water here is pouring down inside a Swiss mountain; draining from a glacier, cutting rock as it falls. Despite the seeming impenetrability of rock, the water finds a way to cut through to the next level.
This is both exciting and scary. I like the idea of a God who doesn't come at me with a chisel to get me to change shape, but who continually pours his love over me until bit by bit things change.
I am feeling quite nervous about leading the Taize service, but am taking heart from the fact that this time last year it would have been unimaginable for me to even think I might do such a thing, so that is a bit of rockcutting that must have been going on - who knows what other bits of me, or you he plans to, or is already reshaping!

Little things...

I have had quite a busy week so far and was feeling a little guilty about not having posted anything on the blog for quite some time and not even really looked at it. When I looked again today I noticed we have had more visits from around the world. I have no idea who they are or how much of the site they read but it was a little spark of encouragement to know that our thoughts about God and our experiences in our part of God's kingdom are possibly being shared globally. We are called to go into the world to bring good news and in this day and age there are so many opportunities to literally do this with out leaving our small community. I hope and pray that people who do stumble across our little blog will find something to help, challenge or inspire them to know more about God and if you are one of those people please take a few moments to comment and say hi we'd love to hear from you.

'The Lord all powerful said:
"You people are precious to me"