Glow, grow, and go.

What is this? It's a box of Ready brek. Will anybody here admit to liking Ready brek? Does anybody remember the Ready brek ads on the telly?

In those ads, what happens to the boys and girls when they eat Ready brek? They start glowing with this wierd orange glow, like a lightbulb has been switched on inside them.

Now how would you feel if one morning you ate some Ready brek and you actually starting glowing? How do you think that the rest of your family would react? I think that I’d be pretty freaked out, I’d probably call the doctor.

So, you can imagine how freaked out the people in the bits of the Bible that we’ve just heard read were when people started glowing.

God’s people, the Israelites, were camped in the desert between Egypt and Palestine, at the bottom of a mountain. Moses, whom God had sent to rescue them from slavery in Egypt, had disappeared up the mountain. They had seen thunder and lightening and all sorts, and now Moses reappears, carrying two big bits of stone and he’s glowing. They are completely freaked out and run away. He didn’t know why, he didn’t have a mirror with him on the mountain, and didn’t know that his face has glowing.

But eventually they sort out what is going on. Moses face wasn’t glowing because he’d had Ready brek for breakfast, it was because he had been close to God, speaking with God.

Continued here...

What's Missing?

Marmalade. This is the marmalade that I made from some of the left over Christingle oranges. I know that I was warned that they were the wrong type of oranges, but I thought I'd give it a go anyway. As you can see, this marmalade is a bit on the runny side. There is something missing, in this case, it's probably not got enough pectin in it.

I wonder if you've ever had the experience of thinking that there is something missing. Sometimes things just don't add up, and sometimes it's difficult to tell what it is that's missing. If you didn't know anything about making marmalade then you might not have been able to tell what was missing from this jar. Just that something wasn't quite right.

Paul had got a strong feeling that there is something missing. He'd been travelling around what is now Turkey and Greece, telling anybody who would listen about Jesus. He has now ended up in Ephesus. Whilst he was there he met up with a group of disciples. Now, in today's reading we only have a snapshot of their conversation, but I think that there must have been more to it than this. It doesn't really sound like the first line in a conversation, does it?, “Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?”

Continued here...