take care, stay safe, God bless
Although her faith was by no stretch of the imagination complete, just moments after meeting Jesus, she went out and drew people in. “Come and see” she says.
And they do.
How about us? Do we wait till we’ve gone on a training course? Got a qualification? If we learn nothing else, it should be that we don’t have to know all the answers before inviting people to come and see.
Can I ask all the men and boys in the congregation to stand up please if you’re able?
If you’re 80 years or older then please sit down again. If you’re 69 or younger, then please sit down.
And if we’ve all got our maths right, that should leave us with men in their seventies. So, can I borrow you up at the front here for a few minutes please?
He walked down one of the narrow streets then hesitated a moment before entering the potter’s shed.
First, he was hit by the smell of wet clay. Then the sound of the wheel turning. He saw the bowl of water, the liquid clay on the hands.
As he sat beside the potter, slowly he noticed the effort involved in keeping the clay in place on the wheel and the subtlety of pressure by different parts of the hand.
He began to understand the testing of the potter’s creativity. The accuracy. The love.
Here are the opening verses of Genesis from The Message:
‘First this: God created the Heavens and Earth—all you see, all you don’t see. Earth was a soup of nothingness, a bottomless emptiness, an inky blackness. God’s Spirit brooded like a bird above the watery abyss. God spoke: “Light!” And light appeared’.
The Lord will guide you always; he will satisfy your needs in a sun-scorched land and will strengthen your frame. You will be like a well-watered garden, like a spring whose waters never fail.
The Lord will guide… but often he’ll do that through you and me. We’re the ones who act as signposts for others.
Moses was 80 years old. He’d been tending someone else’s flock for 40 years.
One day, he was out with the sheep, probably thinking about his pension plan, when he took a different path – and from there he saw a bush that was burning. His life completely changed direction…
But how long was that bush burning for, waiting to be noticed? How many other signs had Moses missed along the way, along the years?