revmusings

Yesterday I preached on 1 Corinthians 13 for the first time and it hit me like a ten ton truck. I have heard it preached at weddings and at one ordination, I have seen it on pretty posters in Christian bookshops and I have always had a nice feeling about it - yes an ideal to aim at but preparing it this week and seeing for the first time (I know I am slow on the uptake for those of you going Doh! at me) as a stinging rebuke by Paul to his readers and so linked with everything he has been having at go at them for in the previous chapters made me, as well as them, feel very small. When I compare my words and actions against those words I find myself failing at every hurdle but now I have a plumb line agianst which to measure - I just need to make myslef stop and think before I speak and act - a hard mountain to climb for me!

Its one of the reasons I tend to do series going through a book of the bible systematically because only then do you get the full the picture of what the writer is trying to convey and you see passages in contect of the whole.

Two elderly ladies who have been Christians all their lives have a conversation:

One says 'I may be mostly housebound but God is always with me, we talk all the time. I can't read much anymore but I can remember all those verses I learnt as a child, they sustain me. I pray for the church everyday that God will sustain it and grow it for future generations'

The other says: ' I just want to church to be there till I die - I don't care what happens to it after that. I have my social life there and people are kind to me - it has to stay there for me till I go.'

They both read the same bible and heard the same sermons......

I was woken early this morning by a phone call - early calls generally mean the person on the other end is going to be in distress so I answered it with trepidation....

'I'm on the top of MT Fuji' said the breathless and very excited voice of our middle daughter, 'I did it'!

She has been in Japan for two weeks training with some masters in karate (she is a black belt) and the climb up the mountain was the final part of the training. She had seriously infected sinuses before she went so her climb was in doubt and apparently she nearly had to turn back half way due to altitude sickness but she kept going (nothing stops this girl: she will crawl to work, to training or to rehearsals come what may). Her friends got her there and she was proud of and thankful to them.

Sadly, having climbed for over 6 hours to see the sunrise the weather was awful and too cloudy to see anyhting - they are going to buy postcards of what it should look like to show us all!.  I am so proud of her and her determination to achieve her goals despite setbacks and pain!