Peru

Great to read the blog of our Church's link missionaries the Williamson family. You can find it here:

http://williamsonsinperu.blogspot.com/

WD-40

Amazing stuff, WD-40.

The mystical name simply means Water Displacement, 40th formula.

That's how many times it took Norm Larsen to achieve a product that claims to have 2000 uses and is found in probably most sheds and garages!

40 attempts though.

It's too easy to think that the formula for prayer is P-1.

Then Jesus told his disciples a parable to show them that they should always pray and not give up. He said:

"In a certain town there was a judge who neither feared God nor cared about men. And there was a widow in that town who kept coming to him with the plea, 'Grant me justice against my adversary.'
"For some time he refused. But finally he said to himself, 'Even though I don't fear God or care about men, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will see that she gets justice, so that she won't eventually wear me out with her coming!' "

And the Lord said, "Listen to what the unjust judge says. And will not God bring about justice for his chosen ones, who cry out to him day and night?

Perhaps it's really P-40?

Vacation

Holidays, vacation times, are great. And one of the joys is seeking out churches at which to worship. Though I must confess that has been a disappointment more often than a joy.

Never more so then when, on a visit in Catholic Europe we finally traced the location of an English-speaking and Protestant church. Or at least the place where it was to meet. After a long walk we met this notice in the window.

The Priest in Charge of this church has resigned without warning or due notification. The Bishop of the Diocese has suspended the Parish without warning or due notification. For those reasons Anglican Church Services are no longer held in this church.

We were not the only ones on vacation! It was very vacated indeed.

I figured the following;

• Now I know why I don't believe a Priest is essential to a church, still less a Bishop. After all, whatever their issues they had conspired to deny us a group of believers with whom to share worship in our language. If a congregation had turned up, I'd have happily led the service!
• If you are going to put a notice in the window it either needs to say more than this - something positive perhaps? - or less. I thought this was probably the most woeful church notice I had ever read. And THAT is saying something!

Meanwhile, the world continued to pass by the busy street while the ecclesiastical wheels remained stuck in the ecclesiastical mud.

May God grant us some vacationing fellowship to celebrate.

Fathers' Day

So what? Very many voices declare that fatherhood is simply a poorer version of motherhood which is where true parenting happens. A man - maybe even two men - who behave like a mother are ‘supportive assets’ to children but so might be a single mum’s circle of friends. Parenting and supportive assets are in, fatherhood is history.

History perhaps, but also divine history. In the Bible’s world the pinnacle of relationships was that of a father with his son and it is one of the key pictures of God’s internal being.
What does fatherhood do? A father-son relationship always has a generational future and past whereas a marriage belongs only to one generation. Where there is true fatherhood and sonship these are the questions that are more often and widely asked; ‘How can I shape the future?’, ‘What can I learn from your experience?’. A world where these questions are asked less is a lesser world.

Fathering lacks the bodily intimacy that creation grants to marriage and motherhood. But fatherly love is manifested, among other ways, in a wide and wise strategic interest. At every strategic high point in Christ’s ministry a father’s voice is heard: This is my beloved Son with whom I am well pleased. It sounds to us like a joke but it was a profound old saying that while mother and daughter work in the kitchen, father and son look out of the window. If no relationship gazes beyond, many journeys will never begin.