Big Stories

Acts 11:1-18

After four weeks it is still the number one topic of conversation in the village; Yesterday I went into the butcher's shop for the first time since the flood. His first words to me were a question about my experience. We spent some time reminiscing over our experiences.
By coincidence, or maybe it was not coincidence while I was thinking about how an important event takes over our conversation I read this story from the Guardian. I thought the lady's last few lines very relevant. We can talk at length about the important events.
This is just what Peter did. His mind was blown away by the fact that God could and did give the Holy Spirit to Gentiles. None of the details of the episode escaped his retelling.
I hope that I remember to give God his place in the retelling of the events of my life. In the current one it is that I thought about putting the drying frame in Naomi's bedroom and thus happened to glance out of her window and see the water enter our garden. The alternative was probably that I would have been doing what I am doing now and be sat with my back to the downstairs window. The first I would have known about the flood was when it reached my feet. Those little nudges are important.

Ask if you want to know.

John 7:37-52

I always find it difficult to answer the question "Where are you from?" The identity which I associate with is Welsh though by most definitions I am not Welsh. I was born of Derbyshire parents in Norwich and was moved to Haverfordwest when I was three months old. All my growing up was done in Wales and it is the place where I have lived longest as my mother left there when I was twenty one and three months old. This narrowly beats the town where we moved from to here, where we spent twenty years. That is Houston, Texas. I sound English but my vocabulary tends to be Texan.
Sometimes if you want to know the truth you just have to have the courage to ask and not assume that you can work out the answer for yourself based on half the evidence.
Maybe the Jewish leaders did not want to face up the the truth about Jesus.
Do I need to step out of some preconceived ideas?

The same old question

John 7:14-36

Recently I received notification of a book called "How God became Jesus". I was intrigued by the title but irritated by what I read upon investigation.
The points raised seem reminiscent of the questions discussed by Jesus' listeners in today's reading.  However much we think we have progressed with our laptops and gsms or our cars and planes the fundamental questions of life and faith remain the same.
Where do I stand? Listening to Jesus and following his teaching.

Post flood

Acts 8:1-13

You may have seen the video of the great Ittre flood of three weeks ago.

This is my photograph. It is silent, there is no roar of raging torrents. You can hear those on the video. You cannot smell the damp mud of the next next from zither the photograph or the video, you had to be there.
Crises happen. There was persecution, the believers left their homes and fled. They went far afield and spread the good news of life with Jesus. Thus the world outside Jerusalem and Judea began to know that God loves them.
In the days following the flood many total strangers passed through our house, some coming for three days shovelling mud, washing floors and furniture, demolishing the kitchen, ripping up the floor, washing and packing crockery and glassware. Most were from the higher parts of Ittre but there were some from Nivelles and Braine le Comte. Still living with the noise of three dehumidifiers and without a kitchen is it is difficult to work out where God is going with this experience. I know my neighbours a lot more, I know the wonderful heart of many of the helpers, some of whom we did not see, there were the volunteer washer-women. I know the gentle caring of the red cross commune workers who daily inquired after our well-being. I know the sharing over delivered meals brought by a high and dry neighbour with a big heart and large saucepans. And I met a mother and daughter who came to help, the daughter having to be a tag-along just like I was, because her father too had died when she was little more than an infant.
God has a very complex jigsaw puzzle and it is amazing how the pieces fit together.