Plus some cheese, eggs, ham, sausage rolls, cake, tea, coffee, fourteen hymns/songs and forty-five people squeezed into one lounge to praise God.

Today was our (new this year!) quarterly lunch club service where we go out to where members live and do a songs of praise service and tea.  This time we hit parity on numbers - as many folk who are not part of our regular congregation as are.  Well, OK if you include me there was one more of us, we didn't have two half people.

Things that I find about these events are...

• no one can believe we do this for no charge and with no collection
• we have finally got to the stage where enough church folk just get on and do what is needed without having to be asked, cajoled or rostered to do it (though it still falls to the minister to supply a few folding chairs which we now seem to need wherever we go)
• people really enjoy singing the hymns, seem to value the prayers and listen carefully to the 5 minute thought for the day
• the buzz, laughter, sense of well-being and life-giving is enormous
• we always have enough baskets of left-overs to feed a few folk for Monday lunch!

Today's reading combined the Revelation 7 vision of people of all tribes, nations and tongues with the Johanine promise of many mansions and divine shalom.  If the realisation of these visions or metaphors extends to the fulfilment what we shared a glimpse of today then they will be truly wonderful.  One of my throw away comments was that maybe if heaven was like a house with many rooms it would be a bit like the sheltered complex - to which one 95 year-old responded "ooh, what a lovely thought.'  I hope, then, for her, that it is.