Retreating from the World

Sorry (again) that the blog has been silent for a while. I was away last week on a retreat at a Cistercian Monastery in Leicestershire. If you'd be interested to see where I went, here's a link to their website: http://www.mountsaintbernard.org/

I had a very pleasant few days, with my nose stuck firmly in a few books, sitting in quiet solitude in the monastery garden. I quite enjoyed worshipping in the Abbey at regular intervals, except that as an Anglican in a Roman Catholic environment, I was a bit lost at various points (a good lesson to me as a worship leader to make sure I lead people well during our worship!)

My favourite book of the week was a new one by Rowan Williams, called "Tokens of Trust". His thinking is far too deep to try and summarise on a blog - but I will share one nugget that I picked up. Williams tried to answer the question of what God's primary purpose is, in relation to us. He answered it, surprisingly succinctly, with two words: 'peace' and 'praise', which as well as being short, is nicely alliterative as well (starts with the same letter!). In other words, God's whole being bent on beinging peace between God and humans, and between humans themselves - and then on focusing our lives on him. Nice and simple I thought.

In the meantime, I've not been too idle. Here's a sermon I preached Sunday last, just before going on retreat. Have you ever wondered what the word 'Testament' refers to...(i.e. the 'New Testament or the Old)?. Well 'testament' is an old word for covenant (which in itself is a form of legal agreement). This sermon explored what God's covenants, or testaments, with human beings have been since the dawn of time.

Secondly, I preached yesterday a sermon which was the last in our local series on young people of the Bible. It was a family service sermon - so has some 'interactive' sections in it where I got our children to tell me how much they had understood of previous sermons - but I hope there's enough meat on the rest of the sermon for you to see what it was about! Please click here to read it - and as always, please let me know what you think!

Good to be back in the saddle. Don't forget that my One Man Show takes place this Saturday evening at St James' Emsworth...hope you can join us!