A great weekend!

Sat on the M25 car park in the rain at 8 ‘o’ clock Monday morning, seeing 2 magpies hunting at the side of the road, have to say it didn’t seem much like ‘two for joy’! But then I reflected on the weekend and realised, yes, its been a great weekend – and in fact the day ahead was to be great too – once I’d recovered from the nightmare journey – just over 3 hours to do just over 80 miles in the rain is not nice – I am turning into an old grump!!

Anyway, the weekend. It was an exercise free weekend – strange! Stayed in Saturday morning to spend some time with Julie as was stewarding at the rugby in the afternoon and Helen was away. Prepared a new dish ready for tea later, courtesy of The Times – chicken and spinach potato gratin – it wasn’t horrible, but I won’t bother cooking it again! Anyway, that’s not part of the ‘great weekend’!! But the rugby in the afternoon was!! 🙂 On the way to the rugby I popped into the opticians to see if my new glasses had come in yet – they had, just a few minutes earlier, but hadn’t been checked yet. All the staff were busy, so I put my old hat on, checked me glasses and set them up myself – very happy heading to the rugby with my new specs on!

Blues v Llanelli in the British & Irish Cup. An excellent match with excellent exciting rugby from both sides. The start was a little worrying with Llanelli going 7 nil up pretty quickly – they have a superb kicker – but then Myles Dorrian proved to be superb on Saturday afternoon too – providing he wasn’t taking a penalty from a pretty central position in front of the posts!! 😉

7 nil pretty quickly became 7:7, then 7:14, then 14:14, then 14:21, then 21:21 – a tense, exciting first half, with more to come in the second, with Bedford taking the lead for the first time after just a few minutes in 26:21, penalty to Llanelli 26:24, penalty to Bedford 29:24 and then another great try to finish things off Bedford win 36:24!!! Great stuff!

Sunday morning I went to Brickhill Baptist Church– an excellent time of worship, sensitively led with plenty of congregational participation including scripture reading, prayers, prophetic sharing, tongues and interpretation. Music led by an excellent band with a most skilled keyboard player, who played sensitively in the background to support worship and avoid embarrassing silences. We shared communion together as part of worship, going to different tables around the worship area gave a real sense of community and sharing together. There was even time for the ‘chair’ for the day to lead us at the end of the worship time in a period of quiet meditation and reflection. Excellent stuff.

Richard Green was going to preach, but before preaching he introduced a DVD clip to a project called Catalyst, being run by New Frontiers across the East Midlands to help equip people to be a real missional people and enable them to serve well in their churches. Its run over 5 Saturday’s – one a month from January to May – cost £25 for whole course – bargain!! I plan to go, subject to confirmation after my return from sabbatical, and would encourage others to come too! I checked with Richard and it is open to folk who are not in New Frontiers churches – bless you my friends!

Anyway, on to Richard’s preach! He gave some excellent teaching from Galatians 6:1-10 – did a good summing up of the series so far and then covered 2 main points, running out of time for his 3rd. We looked at our need to truly love and support one another – and receive that love and support – at how this is best fulfilled through small groups where we can be honest and open – and we looked at our need to be responsible for ourselves, noting that the words translated ‘burdens’ and ‘load’ are different words with different meanings and expectations. It was a real blessing to be with my friends there.

Talking of friends…. when I got home I was just about to put the veggies on to cook when the phone went…. ‘Don’t do it…. Mum’s invited friends round for tea later.’ We had a great time just chatting and sharing together over dinner early evening.

All of this made for a great weekend, which was even more blessed when I discovered that Liverpool had beaten Everton 2:0. Yes!