coming up for air

I feel as if I'm just coming up for air - can't quite believe where the last two weeks since any blogging have gone to, but when I look at my diary, I begin to understand why! Someone passed on a phrase this week, which came to them whilst praying for me - 'wafer thin' - which kind of explains how I've felt at times recently - so agony but helpful, so thanks. Maggie is a cake decorator and I've helped roll out the icing - it can spread a much wider area the thinner you go, but usually not so effective (and doesn't taste so good either!). I console myself with the thought of sabbatical part two coming up soon and excuse myself with 'I need to do this before ...', but yeah, I know, it couldn't carry on like this for long. 

I'm also trying to prepare for our WEBA 3-in-1 on Sunday too - admittedly I'm nervous about this one. we're encouraging people to gather around 'making a difference' which is how we've built our purpose into out new logo. to that end we've not invited a big name speaker from outside - I'm it. I'm bothered no one will turn up, but know that's not going to be true and recognise the cocktail of adreneline, excitement and anxiety. It's funny, isn't it, how what we love can simultaneously be what we dread and many preachers will recognize this at least weekly feeling - at least Spurgeon often felt sick too! I tend to think this remains another good argument for preaching in a congregational setting - putting people into groups is much easier, but doesn't encourage your sense of dependence upon God to deliver something of potentially eternal significance. So, I'm putting my trust in God and his word again and will just put up with feeling awful till after Sunday night - I have an induction and Sunday morning preach at Keynsham to fit in before this.

I've been wondering this week too (obviously in the car too much) what we'd think this thing we call being a Minister might look like in our minds if we became a Christian with no experience of the Church whatsoever and merely put the 'job spec' for a full-time appointment together on the basis of reading through the New Testament. Obviously, I can't do this however hard I try, but I'm thinking of trying. Oh, keep going Andy Murray - I'm happy to be British. I'm also the same age as Michael Jackson who sadly died yesterday as the world knows - 15% of all twitter connections yesterday were about this breaking news - the previous high was 5% - wow!