Because I'm on holiday next week I am trying to prepare the sermon for when I return.  I have now realised I misread the week number as per the lectionary (not that anyone will know) so have been working with 1 John 5:1 - 6 and John 15: 9-17 and intending to do some explorations about love, noting that in 1 John believers are children of God and in John 15 friends of Jesus.  After three abortive attempts I had lunch, and realised part of my struggle was that 1 John 4:7-20 kept sneaking into my mind.

So here's the conundrum.

1 John 4:7 - Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God.  Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God.

So far so good.

1 John 5:1 - Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God, and everyone who who loves the father loves his child as well.

So which is it?  Is it our love that makes us children of God?  Or is it our faith?  Or is it the wrong question? (undoubtedly!)

I think I'm going to add the 1 John 4 passage to our set of readings - though I'm not sure my task will be any less of a struggle - and maybe try to tease out some of the implications of the conundrum:

1 John 4: 20 - If we say we love God yet hate a brother or sister, we are liars.  For any of us who do not love a brother or sister whom we have seen, cannot love God, whom we have not seen

Faith is as faith does... which after all is my central Bible verse in paraphrase!

Last night I was at a school Governor's meeting where we were discussing information relating to the appointment of a new head teacher.  When we got to essential attributes, I observed that churches always seem to want the Archangel Gabriel for their new minister.  One of the staff governors commented that many of the teachers had responded to that by saying they wanted Johnny Depp.  Since I was taking the minutes, I recorded "Archangel Gabriel meets Johnny Depp" (now I may be a getting old but Johnny Depp isn't my hunk of choice!  How about Sean Connery, Martin Shaw, Trevor Eve... ).

I was intrigued by the assumption that a head teacher will be male, in much the same way that most churches assume ministers will be male.  How would people define their ideal female head teacher?  Virgin Mary meets ... (insert name)?  Or their ideal female minister?  Virgin Mary meets Geraldine Grainger perhaps?!  What d'you think?