Well, we’re back. We had a lovely couple of days in which we marked off another year on my calendar and celebrated that I am one year closer to retirement (although they keep moving the goalposts for that!).
We went to Canterbury and I went into the Cathedral for the first time ever. It is an amazing building, especially when you think it was built without any of our modern machinery, gizmos and thingummywotsits. It is a bit more ornate than your ordinary Baptist church. (A friend of mine once commented that Victorian Baptists made a virtue of ugliness!)
I was trying to work out why they built it so tall. I am sure there is a good reason (acoustics?) but the answer I came to is that it forces you to crane your neck to look up so you are already looking in the right direction. This assumes (incorrectly) that heaven is located above us, but you get the point.
How often do we stop and look upwards, open-mouthed, in awe and wonder? Not at a ceiling a long way above us, but at God. I took a funeral service this afternoon and in that service I used some words that reflect how far beyond our comprehension God is, yet how intimately with us he is:
Eternal God, source of all life and inspiration for living you are too mysterious to understand, too awesome to behold. In our imagining of you you are further from us than we can conceive, yet in our experience of you you are closer to us than we are to ourselves. Thank you for dwelling in us and being present for us in each other.Time to look up?
Be blessed, be a blessing.
nukelearfishing 