Church was great again today... I am so privileged to be where I am doing what I'm doing.  Lot's of lovely comments about my service and lots of new faces once again... life is good, God is great.

Three words really at the heart of what today was about, three characteristics that emanate from God and inform our relating to God, to creation, to others, to ourselves...

Love

Hope

Faith

If, as John 3:16 tells us, God loved the cosmos so much God's Son entered the cosmos to save the cosmos, what does that tell us about God and about our response?

It forces us to care about the whole of creation

It forces us to care about all other people

It forces us to care about ourselves

The two 'Great Coomandments' fit with this too...

Love God with every ounce of your existence

Love the people with whom you share the planet

Love yourself the way you love others

All this blows my brain but it's what it means to live in the light of Bible.

God never stops loving all that God has made

God never stops hoping that the Kingdom will be fulfilled

God never stops 'faithing' that God's will be done.

Thank God for such a God!

A bit slow on the uptake here...

October was breast cancer awareness month, November is prostate cancer awareness month.  We probably all know someone with this invisible, silent killer of men though they may not tell us.  I certainly know a few now and have known a few in the past.

Movember is a slightly quirky thing to grow a moustache for a month (Google the word you'll find our more) in aid of the charity and to raise awareness.

One of the things for men having chemo is loss of their facial hair, which if they are bearded or moustachioed must be very hard to deal with.  We think of the psychological impact on women of hair loss but not that on men.  To be able to choose to be clean shaven or not is something most people will never think about unless/until that choice is taken away from them.

I have to confess I'm not a beard/moustache fan but I'm glad that people are taking up this challenge, if only for 30 days...