mini-adventures

There wasn't a school assembly today.

Instead the children of P5 were putting on a show. Crikey Moses!

I went along, at the usual Wednesday time, to see the dress rehearsal. In front of all the school. The thing was really superb.

The story of Moses depicted in music and dance. The children were great, the music was good, and the whole thing was really very wonderful. Amazing what these children can put on.

And what their teachers can produce. I was speaking to one (of the teachers) at the end. She said very simply - "who said religion can't be fun!"

This was a mini-adventure all right. I mean, the story of Moses is one big adventure itself, from start to end. And here were these children telling the whole pulsing story and doing it with music and dance.

Who said religion can't be fun!

Well, it wasn't me. That's for sure. My life is very varied and it's always full of fun. The day-by-day excitement of a series of mini-adventures.

Though I don't really think of what I do as being 'religion'.

More just following Jesus and seeing what he is doing all the time. And fitting in.

The service at lunch was centred round one of the psalms. Psalm 107. You can't read that without a sense of there being a certain adventure in sharing your life with the Lord.

Alastair was leading and speaking. I got the job at the back. Sound and video projection. He'd asked me to come up with graphics as background to the psalm. I'd worked on that in the morning.

Deserts and storms and prisons and all sorts of mess. Life with the Lord is a series of mini-adventures. And sometimes not so mini.

I've been working as well on the DVD. The long, creative part is done. It's now the production side of things.

A fairly lengthy process in itself in many ways. And it's here that the technical challenges usually are. So some time was spent on that. Sorting out some of the problems that had arisen.

There were folk to see as well. Down at the Western General. And one or two at home. It was good to have some time with each of them and sense God's presence there.

And each of these occasions in its way just another mini-adventure. I never know quite what to expect. I just go there looking for him. For what it is he's doing in these people's lives.

And then I went on and had tea at the Holiday Inn. It sounds quite good, my saying that. But there was a price to pay. My blood.

You get a cup of tea once you've given your pint of blood. And this time, most unusually, the Blood Transfusion Service had a session at the local Holiday Inn. Not far along the road, and sort of on the way back home from being at the hospital. Appropriately.

They ask you far more questions than even the police! Name and age and date of birth. Address, that sort of thing. Then where have you been and what have you done and who have you been with and all sorts of questions like that.

I'm getting used to such interrogation, of course!

The ladies in charge were super again. They always are. We usually have quite a laugh. I said they should have been in touch and had it in our halls. And I think a load of folk had also been suggesting that.

I gave them the number to call. We'll see where this little mini-adventure leads.

At night I was round with the 'group of five' (well, it's five including me) who've been meeting for a while. Mostly on a weekly sort of basis, though it must have been perhaps three weeks since last we met.

Back to the book of Genesis again. The start of chapter 9.

We didn't get far. We got onto things like going vegetarian.

Whether in the world as it is today - with failing crops, a growing population and all sorts of swathes of land being used for bio-fuels instead of grain, and with it taking up to 9 kilos of grain to produce 1 kilo of meat (so far as cattle are concerned) - whether in the world as it is today we should start to eat less meat.

Nothing too weighty! Just solving the pressing problems of the world.

It was good to be able to pray as well. And to sense as we did that God was in it all.

Another mini-adventure.