Back to Church Sunday

I'm really excited about this Sunday coming up.  All over the country people are inviting their friends and relatives, work colleagues and netball team mates to come and visit the churches they go to.  Jesus was all about inviting people to come and find out how great he is and then sending them out to invite others.   And over the last few weeks we've being inviting and on Sunday we're going to have the privilege of seeing people find out for themselves.  You can't get much more exciting than that.

If you're reading this and thinking, "but I haven't been invited", then consider yourself invited by me.  If you're in the UK then you can find out where your local church is, here.  If you're not in the UK, then check the phone book or Google.  

Let me know what you find out.

Pride

Does anybody else find pride a really debilitating thing?  So much so, that I hardly know how to write this note.

The short story is that today I had a column published in our local paper, The Sentinel.    I guess I'll know if it's any good if I'm asked to contribute again.

To be honest I didn't do much to get the original invitation.   In my first couple of weeks here I spent a bit of time with the director of Saltbox, a local parachurch organisation, who has contacts at the Sentinel.  About a month ago he sent an email to a  few of us saying that the paper was looking for contributors to its weekly "Yours Faithfully" column, and I stuck my hand up and volunteered. 

The thing is, just before I left college someone suggested to me that writing might be part of the ministry that God has for me.  Here I am, three months later with something like this falling into my lap.  It's almost like there is actually a God :-)

So, what has all this got to do with pride?  Well, I'm absolutely tickled pink.  I love the fact that I wrote something and now loads of people might be reading it.  On one level this is because I'm chuffed that I've had the opportunity to write Kingdom stuff in a public forum, but to be honest it's also about me having had something published.

I don't know what to do with this feeling, and I don't want it to stop me engaging with the stuff God has for me to do, so I'm going to keep going (if they ask me to).  The best I can do at the moment is to write this in a public space as well, and ask you to pray for me, that my pride might be at the level of a workman taking pleasure in a job well done, rather than that of a peacock.

We've just returned from a holiday in not-so-sunny north wales. Was a good week, with lots of walking, steam trains, getting muddy, playing in the sea, etc etc. We're pretty exhausted now....somehow holidays with young children don't seem to be quite the rejuvenating thing they once were! But lots of fun and a good time to go just before they start school on wednesday, which is good but pretty scary for all concerned.
Here's some pics of the holiday...

xPlaying at Llandudno



Tabitha and Daddy climbed Snowdon. Even the beginning was in cloud...