riding on aslan :D

I found a church near where I live today... It was good - the worship could have been more focussed... The team was great, but... perhaps that's why you shouldn't be lettin what's around you in... It's called Glenwood Church Centre. The word was about engaging with the Word... letting it change you. Today and on March 25th, churches around the world will sing Amazing Grace. We are celebrating the abolition of slavery... but one of the things that shocked me that the pastor said was that the slave trade exists. Today. A number of Chinese illegal immigrants were press ganged and brought here to collect bags of cockles in Morecambe Bay for a fiver a bag. They are kept in unsanitary conditions and one night when they were working, a wave swept them in. The man whose story made it out made a last phone call to his wife. His recorded words were "Sinking water sinking water Many many sinking water". He was never heard from or of again. We have no photograph of him. His wife in China alone would remember his face.

This was a weepy sorta sermon for me... Huh, news! But they showed pictures of the church's involvement with people in Burkina Faso and there was this crunching, twisting feeling inside... I am not being melodramatic... But it's not new to me. However, I pray that some day I will have the courage to get up and say I want to be involved. I am usually happier making the tea and coffee and shifting the chairs... But worship is something that I have grown into, and love doing. And over the last couple of years, the Lord's removed the embarrassment of inadequacy. So yes, I am inadequate, and yes, my voice might break in the most horrible way suddenly in the middle of a song (that is not experience, that's a flippin nightmare:D) - but God wants a joyful noise anyway and if He chooses to put me there, He'll take care of everything - voice, noise and nightmares. LOL. It took me sometime to realise that it really is all about Him. I would have agreed instantly if anyone'd asked me if it was - but to make it real and subsume it into my consciousness... well, it took God to do that I suppose :) And I'm still so blessed by it. I am grateful though that when the Lord actually tells me something, however insignificant I feel about it, I must do it or be restless and unhappy. I do it because I fear not doing it. I also do it because I know I will love doing it. And because I know anywhere outside of God's perfect will - particularly, when He has made it known - will never be home to me, or indeed to anyone whom He has set upon!

I do miss BCC. The intimacy of worship and the fellowship I've experienced there. They taught me what it is to really be a part of God's family. Unlike anywhere else... BCC, Ga, MP and VP... Their story must be told too. I'll never know how I have helped there - there must be some small way just because nothing is wasted in the economy of God :) (that's Morgan's line btw). But God bless them for being a part of my life. Strangely enough, I actually mean that. They have been more of a family to me than people I have grown up with. And I do not mean my own family at this point. But they are so precious because of the way God's love has radiated from them. In so many ways, BCC has kept up the Rivers of Life idea of living the 1st C church... And in so many ways, they are also a part of today's community. So thank You, God, for the fantastic people I've met in the most amazing ways in this country. From the African brother who discussed the Bible with me on my first flight into this country, to the family I've made, to the random people who show Jesus even when I moved into Cardiff like M&V. And thank You, that You will help me find that church here too where I will fit in and where I can serve too even in teeny chair-shifting ways ;)