Blog
In the first session of our Lent course this week, we were introduced to the concept of spiritual formation - the forming/shaping of spiritual character that has taken place in each of us over time. Dallas Willard said in an interview once that "everyone gets a spiritual formation. It’s like education. Everyone gets an education; it’s just a matter of which one you get."
Maybe you have heard the story of the minister who tried to save money by watering down the paint he was using to paint the church building. After the job was done, he could see that it didn't look great at all and, as he stood there wondering what to do about it, a voice boomed from the heavens, "Repaint. And thin no more!".
I recently heard an experienced colleague describe how he had been meeting with a counsellor and one of the themes they explored was his tendency towards people-pleasing (very common among clergy!) My colleague freely admitted that he found it very hard to disappoint people, and the counsellor then said that unless he was open to more conflict in his life, his relationships were likely to remain largely superficial.
In the services last Sunday, I shared some details about an exciting project due to launch here in the next couple of weeks. A providential meeting with a young barista is becoming what we hope will be a wonderful partnership for our community. From humble beginnings, Ndu Ngcobo has achieved significant success in the competitive coffee world, but his bigger dream is to offer hope and skills to young people in his home community.
We've updated our church app and would love to have you try it out!
Michael Easter's excellent book "The comfort crisis" makes the argument that our relentless quest for greater ease and comfort is not good for us; on the contrary, he suggests that if we want to thrive in this life we need to actively seek out discomfort. The book weaves together a range of scientific studies with the story he tells of his own epic (uncomfortable) journey through vast uninhabited areas in the Arctic. We have found it a fascinating read!
In Jesus' parable of the sower (Matt 13:18ff), the key factor which determines whether the seed will grow and bear fruit or not is the quality of the soil - the parable begs the question, "what kind of soil am I?" We have no power to change the seed or the mysterious natural process that turns a seed into a plant, but we do have some influence over what kind of soil we will be.
Every morning as I walk through our front door, I pass an outdoor pot plant - some kind of succulent - that is living its best life. The little plant has green leaves everywhere and it just beams at us when we pass by. It has not always been this way though. During 2020, we were given the gift of this seedling in a pot just weeks before Phoebe (our border collie puppy) joined our family. One day Phoebe was bored and she chewed up the pot and dismembered the plant - all that was left was a stump and a few roots. Hoping against hope I tried replanting it (and storing the new pot out of Phoebe's reach). But nothing happened. It was depressing to keep inspecting this little half-chewed stump in its pot each day and see absolutely no signs of life.
The uptick in morning traffic this week signals that the year has really started now, as schools re-opened. Children are navigating new classes, teachers, or schools, stationery shops have had queues out into the road! and it seems like we are finding our way back into regular weekly rhythms.
In 1874, British soldiers (members of the 75th Regiment of the 1st Gordon Highlanders) were camped in the Giant's Castle area in the Drakensberg and the regimental cook carved the number 75 into a large boulder to mark the fact that they had been there.