Advance Warning!

But not much I’m afraid, the blog is moving, probably within the next couple of days. I will try and set up a forward at this address but due to technical difficulties it may not work for long. You will also need to change you feed if you read this blog via such facilities once the move has happened, for those of you who subscribe via email you need do nothing as that will all be dealt with at my end. So what will the new home be called I hear you ask, well here we go….
www.onmebus.net

see you there.

A very strange dream

I don’t sleep well, as a general rule I have a bad nights sleep much more often than a good one, and it’s not too rare that I have a very bad nights sleep. Last night the bad sleep was due to a dream that I’m going to share with you ‘cos it was very odd and slightly worrying. I was in a building with a friend (although no-one specific) who was concerned about this one room. We went into the room and it felt a little weird and then the friend said a persons name suddenly the lights flickered and these voices could be heard coming from nowhere. The dream went on, we tested a little and tried a few different things and decided the room was possessed and decided to pray. In my dream I was praying and trying to cast out demons and it was half way through this prayer I work up, very suddenly wide awake, strangely I didn’t get back to sleep all that easily and the dream is still playing on my mind, where did that come from?

Questions

A couple of days ago Ian over at youthblog posted about the question box his daughter had said they now had in their group at church, he went on to talk about questions you can read his post here. The reason for mentioning it was that it reminded me of a great question I was asked a few months ago by my (then) not quite 5 year old son. We were in the car driving back from somewhere when he suddenly asked me “Daddy did God make the whole world?” “yes” I replied, “does he make the world spin?” again I replied “yes”, “well how does he keep it spinning at night when he’s asleep?” I’m not sure how well he grasped the idea of God not sleeping I think it all seemed a bit much to his mind, haw can you not sleep, but it’s really encouraging as a parent to be asked these questions or hear your children asking them, it’s little insights into their minds but also the simplicity of their questions can sometimes get us thinking through things ourselves.

Dave hits the nail on the head!

Once again the incredible Dave Walker has summed up how many of us are feeling at the moment:-

Cartoon by Dave Walker. Find more cartoons you can freely re-use on your blog at We Blog Cartoons.

I guess I can't put it off forever (well I could but that would be expensive)I'm going to do it now!!!
Update 10:40(ish) done it!!!!

Grace

Just two weeks late wanted to talk about Sunday 7th Jan. On this date we had a daughter Charys dedicated. It was a really great day, the whole service just all fitted together so well, we are just starting a series on John’s gospel and on the 7th we were looking at John 1:17 “The law indeed was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.” (NRSV). Charys is the Greek word for Grace so this all fitted together really well. The service was fantastic with a great talk by Charles our Vicar and everything just fitting together so well. It was also great to have so many family and friends around to celebrate with us and join us for Lunch, it was a really great day for which we really give thanks to God. Thank you to those who were able to be with us on the day and help to make it so special.

It only takes a few stupid people spoil it for others!

Yesterday was Gill’s birthday, I think she had a good day! we went out as a family for a meal in the evening which was really nice, a good local family restaurant but my meal which was very nice was slightly spoilt but a few stupid people. I like my steak to be shown the heat but not actually put it on! So I ordered my steak blue, to be told we can’t do blue steak! ‘WHAT!’ apparently the problem is too many people have ordered their steak blue and then complained because it wasn’t hot in the middle, I say it again ‘WHAT!’ people get real if you order a steak blue it means it’s still raw in the middle, heat cooks food, so a blue steak will not be hot in the middle, it is your moronic idea that you can have a blue steak HOT, when have you ever had hot raw food? Other than that it was a good meal and I ate way too much. Happy Birthday Gill.

I hate it when that happens

Back at work after 2 days off sick, now that’s not what I hate, although no I don’t like being ill obviously, it’s the fact that because I was ill I had to let people down. Now there was nothing I could do about it, it was one of those things where you can’t afford to go to far away from certain facilities and getting in the car would certainly have caused that to happen. But Sunday morning I was supposed to be leading and preaching at the Methodist church in one of our local villages and I was really looking forward to it, then I had to call them Sunday morning as I was not in a fit state to leave the house. I hope I will be able to re-arrange and join them again soon.
Last week was a silly week hence not much happening here, I hope to write a bit more this week, including some of the stuff I wanted to write about last week but just didn’t have the time to.

interruption postponed

Well due to various technical reasons the move did not happen over the weekend. It will probably be happening some time soon so there will be an interruption at some stage but I will let you know when.

Advance warning

I think I am going to be moving my hosting over the weekend to another server and so the blog may disappear briefly, it will come back and all the feeds etc. will be exactly the same so no need to change anything your end just thought I would explain if some of you hoards try and visit and get an error, although of course if you haven’t seen this first you wont know will you but hey!

See you the other side if the weekend.

Another year gone.

So here we are 2007, Christmas is over and soon all the decorations will be put away and everywhere will look bare again. I just can’t help wondering if every year we (as in the whole church) misses an opportunity. It seems to me that every year many people get Jesus out of the box along with the other decorations, they do the Church thing over Christmas because it’s a nice traditional Christmas story (even if the traditionally story is possibly largely based on bad interpretation, see my post from last Christmas). The problem comes about now, when Jesus goes back in the box with the decorations, and back in the loft to be forgotten about until next year. The question then comes as to what we can do during this brief period when people are actually thinking about the person of Jesus and wanting to remember him, whether out of quaint family tradition or a deeper desire to find more meaning to life and the Christmas season. Somehow during this period we need to challenge people to think about what the Christmas message is, taking it from ‘nice traditional story’ to a life changing historical event, we need to move them from leaving saying “wasn’t it nice to sing those carols” to saying “there was something about that, something there and I don’t know what it was but I want to find out”. I sometimes wonder if we have got so bogged down in the tradition ourselves that we have almost forgotten the Gospel. I remember Mike Yaconelly at Greenbelt talking about the church being full of the people it’s not meant for, Jesus himself said ‘it’s not the healthy who need a doctor’. Are we missing an opportunity so keen to offer the nice traditional Christmas services that we focus on this baby being born and we forget to tell people that he was born with a purpose. If you look at the web address above you will see the domain name ‘notashamed’ coming from Romans 1:16 ‘I am not ashamed of the Gospel for it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes’. Is this true for our services over Christmas if like Paul we are not ashamed then we need to show it, we need to tell people the gospel and Christmas is a major opportunity to do so, yes lets talk about the nice story of the first Christmas but lets put it in the context of salvation and the worlds need for it!

End of rant, hope you did have a good Christmas and pray that you might find peace and grace through the knowledge of salvation this year. God bless