Regular bloggists among you will know that I have been dropping very subtle (!) hints about the magic show I performed with my friend Richard Jones on Saturday. I really enjoyed the evening, and it went really well (apart from one card illusion that didn’t work). The audience was really receptive and got involved, and their feedback afterwards was very encouraging. If you want a sense of what it was like, have a look at this YouTube clip of our last illusion. My favourite moment is the audience reaction half way through – you will have to watch it to see what I mean.
One of the things about performing (comedy magic in my case) is that you feed off the audience. If they respond warmly to you, it encourages you and you perform better, which then makes the audience more excited… and so on. It was quite a shock to me when the card illusion didn’t work and I struggled to know how to recover from it, but the audience lifted me and kept me going even though it must have looked a bit naff.
I have often remarked how, in life, we live for an audience of One. He responds warmly to our every positive activity, and responds with grace when we get things wrong and have turned back to seek him again. That is part of what Christians celebrate at Pentecost (yesterday) when the Holy Spirit was poured out in a new way so that he is within us. His presence within Christians. God’s Spirit lifts us when we fall, comforts, encourages, inspires and renews. If you want to know what he does, look at what Jesus did with people – his Spirit does the same things.
And Jesus shares that task with us and invites us to do the same for one another. Whom can you encourage, lift, inspire and bless?
Be blessed, be a blessing

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