image of God

glimpses of God

/ nukelearfishing67 / 1 Comment

Warning. This bloggage contains images of natural beauty that has the potential to make you jealous.

As you will know if you have followed this blog that we have moved down to Plymouth in Devon, where I am now serving as the Minister of Mutley Baptist Church. The church are being so lovely and welcoming and have sent us lots of ideas of places to go and explore in the area. Now that the boxes are unpacked and most things have found their new place in the manse we decided that last Saturday we would do a little local exploring.

We went about 10 minutes away, to Plym Bridge which, as the name suggests, is a bridge over the river Plym – whose ‘mouth’ gives our city its name. We got out of the car and walked a few metres to the bridge. And we stopped.

It was almost overwhelming. A combination of appreciation of the beauty of the spot, the proximity to where we’re living, and the fact that God has called us to live in such a place led to us just stopping. There may have been some tears. I certainly uttered a quick ‘thank you’ prayer.

These photos give you an idea of our wonderful experience. We walked a couple of miles alongside the river (up one side and back down the other) and basked in the tranquility, enjoyed the calming effect of the burbling river bouncing off the stones and rocks on its way to the sea, nodded to and greeted other walkers, listened to peregrine falcons, and chatted. As they say around here… bootiful. Proper job.

I am originally from Devon so this is something of a return to my homeland for me, but Sally has only lived here for a year (when we first got married) yet she regards Devon as one of her ‘happy places’. Saturday just confirmed all of that too.

And in the midst of all of that I had an encounter with God. Not a loud booming voice or a brilliant white light. Not even with any discernible message. Just an awareness that God was close. Enjoying his creation brings us closer to the Creator. And I reckon he enjoys it too. After all, doesn’t Genesis 1 echo with God’s reflection that ‘it was good’, and finish with him pausing to look at everything and declare it ‘very good’?

It’s relatively easy to do that when we are walking in the Devon countryside, but what about those who live surrounded by bricks and concrete? We can still see glimpses of God in the way that grass gently and persistently breaks through concrete and tarmac; in the birds and even the urban wildlife.

But most of all we get glimpses of God in other people. The Bible tells us we’re made in God’s image – not that we physically look like him, but we bear the maker’s marks and we can see him in each person we meet. In the person who held the door open for you when you had your hands full. In the person who caught your eye and you saw each other over your facemasks. In the person who made you a cup of coffee. In the destitute person asking if you have any spare change. Even (and sometimes especially) in the person we least like or admire. If we look for him he’s everywhere.

So are we looking? And if people look at us, what glimpses of God will they see?

Be blessed, be a blessing

wake up and smell the coffee

/ nukelearfishing67 / Leave a comment

coffeeThose who have only known me a little will probably have realised that I like coffee, especially good coffee. I don’t really like tea (which is not ideal for a Minister doing pastoral visits when a pot of tea has been brewed for you), but coffee hits the spot for me.

It fascinates me that there are so many different types of coffee – if you go to a coffee shop (I am not endorsing any here but am open to sponsorship offers*!) you will be bamboozled by Americanos, Espressos, Double Espressos, Lattes, Mochas, Cappuccino, Frappuccino, Macchiato,  Flat White, Iced Coffee and more besides. Add to that the variations afforded by type of milk (full fat, skimmed, semi-skimmed, soy), syrups, decaffeinated, and more you are left in a daze, in need of a cup of coffee (they know what they’re doing). And there are national variations like Turkish, Arabic and so on…

But that isn’t the whole story either. God in his wonderful wisdom has provided us with a planetary ecosystem that produces a range of different sorts of coffee beans that produce different flavours and are grown in different parts of the world. These are offered either as blends or as individual beans. The flavours also depend on how the beans are roasted and prepared (up to and including  Kopi Luwak coffee: an exotic java made from coffee beans gathered from the poop of the Paradoxorus (a weasel-ish animal). This creature’s intestines digest the outer part of the bean but leave the inside and add a unique flavour which makes it the smoothest and most expensive coffee available).

And don’t get me started on instant coffee varieties and blends.

Thankfully today more and more coffee is grown ethically and the growers receive a fairer price for the crops they grow (well done Fairtrade Foundation for starting us off on this journey!!!). More needs to be done, but we are moving in the right direction.

What I was pondering this morning as I sipped my coffee was how there is such variety in coffee but it is essentially the same thing. It’s all coffee. But the variety is due to different ways and locations that the beans are grown, treated (and digested and excreted 😦 ), roasted, and blended. It’s all coffee, but there is such variety.

And it’s the same with us human beans. We are shaped by our environment, experiences and circumstances. We are all different, yet we all share the same humanity and are all loved by the same God. Indeed the Bible tells us that we are all made in his image (no time or space to unpack that here today).

When we fail to recognise this we start to see people as different from us and thus we start down the slippery slope towards , prejudice, exploitation, discrimination, war and such evils as ‘ethnic cleansing’.

May God help us to see his image in everyone.

Be blessed, be a blessing.

*Only kidding. (But you know where I am!)