34 and Counting

Yesterday I turned 34.

Most of the day was average.

Amongst the cards there was this "true to form" poetic offering from mother:

Great oafs from little infants grow,
It is a truthful saying.
Full four and thirty years have rolled,
And all of us are praying
That Rich will ever greater grow,
In oafishness and knowledge,
By cycling much and preaching loud
And eating bowls of porridge.

My favourite gift was this one, a new addition to the staffroom cupboard, decorated by a very dear friend. Hopefully, having my name on it in big letters means it won't go walkies:

I like to think of myself as a Bob Parr.

Ascension @ BTF Tomorrow Night

Today at RFC, Dave Bish preached an outstanding message on the Ascension! Whether you were there or not, do go to the church website and download it, there is much there to enjoy and meditate on. Worth a(nother) listen, imho!

In God's beautiful timing, tomorrow night, we'll be thinking more on the event of the Ascension at Biblical Thinking Forum (@Church office), joining up some more of the dots and seeing more of how this incredible event fits into the big picture of all that the Father, Son and Spirit are up to in history and how we get our lives in sync with this awesome and glorious reality.

If you want to catch a flavour of what we'll be talking about, click here for a copy of the notes.

Secular Pseudo Saviours

In last week's sermon at church, Sitho explained how Jesus is the true and final prophet, priest and king. Listen again here.

It got me thinking, (yes dangerous I know), because one of the popular myths of our time is that as a society we have left the ridiculously primitive and superstitious ways of our Neanderthal forebears behind in favour of more civilised, enlightened and sophisticated modes of existence. Or to put it another way, the human race (in the West at least) has finally "grown up," and in doing so, thrown off the shackles of religion in favour of a narcissist voyage of discovery. (There is of course some truth in the fact that humanity is "growing up," but that can remain for another post...)

The Seed of the Gospel

This blog entry comes to you from my smartphone on the train as I'm trying to maximise my use of time and fit everything in! What a frenetic world it is!

It seems to me that one of the nasty bi-products of the otherwise good debate that continues between creationists and evolutionists is that we spend so much time trying to shoehorn evolutionary theory into Genesis 1 (or vice versa depending on our starting point) that we lose sight of what God most importantly wants to tell us in Genesis 1, namely about his glorious gospel.

Genesis 1 is like a seed, out of which the great Tree of Life that is the gospel of Jesus Christ grows and flourishes.

A seed may not look like the tree it will one day become, but the essential DNA is there, all that's needed is water, food, sunlight and a gardener.

The world of Genesis 1 is like a seed which the eternal Son shines upon as he takes hold of it, feeds and waters it, with the ultimate aim of seeing his loving Heavenly Father's purposes flourish.

Genesis 1 has all the elements of the gospel, it's just that we need new eyes to see.