An experiment for this evening's dinner guests - a vegan spiral vegetable tart.  Hope is tastes good! If nothing else, it's pretty!

What does the word 'nightlight' suggest to you?  To me, it'as the forerunner of the tealight.  When I was a child, there was always a pack of Price's nightlights in the cupboard under the sink in case of a power cut (1970s, three-day week and all that).  For the writer of the book, it is something else, it is the kind of electric lights that parents leave in their baby's bedroom, or that people install in a bathroom or hallway to give a low level of light for night time use.

The Bible story is Nicodemus visiting Jesus under cover of darkness and famous story of John 3.  With links to John 1, Jesus as light in the darkness of a disordered word is easily made.

A Taize chant:

Stay with us, oh Lord Jesus, Christ, night will soon fall; then stay with us, oh Lord, Jesus Christ - lighten our darkness.

A prayer:

“Lighten our darkness, we beseech thee, O Lord, and by thy great mercy, defend us from all perils and dangers of this night.”

It all feels a bit 'middle class' today because the object is a piano, and the focus is a triad chord as a metaphor for the Trinity.

The first piano we had when I was a child was a battered Victorian upright, the intricate fretwork of which had seen better days, and the velvet backing was threadbare.  And the A two above middle C didn't work! It cost a couple of quid at an auction, including delivery, and how I loved bashing out tunes on it.  Somewhere along the line it disappeared and was eventually replaced by a modern upright bought from a notice in a shop window for £25 - and then sold at a profit to my parents after I'd left home! For a number of years I had a second hand electronic piano, but a couple of years ago I sold it for £25 to a young student desperate for something to play.  Now, when I do play, it is church pianos of various sorts and sizes, and the lack of practice is self evident!

The trinity as a chord, mission as harmony - it's not a bad metaphor, albeit as imperfect as any other.  I quite like the idea of a God who employs beat up pianos with missing hammers to create beautiful music, of a God who turns my stumbling, bumbling attempts into harmonious melodies.

And for those who weren't lucky enough to grow up in an era of free music lessons and cheap second-hand pianos?  Each of us adds our voice, our rhythm, our presence, to create a metaphorical symphony more beautiful than any soloist could ever play.

It's Passion Sunday, and our guide takes a more overtly spiritual theme with today's object - a Bible.

Like the Vicar of Dibley, I have a Bible shelf.  Well, actually I have more than one!

There is the bookcase containing 50 pew Bibles that I am keeping until we return to our shiny new church.

There is the shelf in my office containing more than 20 versions of Bible and/or one of the Testaments.

There is also half a shelf of Bible story books and a collection of ladybird books of Bible stories.

There are Bibles on my desk, by my bed, on my computers and even on my smart phone!

They are part of the 'wallpaper', part of my everyday life, something I give little thought to, unless I want to check something or prepare for a specific service.

The author notes the importance and influence of the Bible, and also that it needs to be read to come alive or have meaning. Using the story of the Ethiopian Eunuch, he notes also that we can (do) need assistance making sense of what we read - it isn't really a solo enterprise.

Over the next couple of weeks I will drawing on story books and Bibles to help generate services that are meaningful and helpful, not just for myself, but in community with others.

God whose WORD became flesh, and whose story is told in the Word recorded by faithful men (and women?), help those of us entrusted to preach and to teach to use our words wisely to your glory of your name. Amen.

Friday (Day31)  - computer, or more specifically hard drive.

Saturday (Day 32) - pen

It's been a busy couple of days, even by my busy standards, and a lot of it has involved pens or computers or both.  I really don't have any intellectual or physical energy spare to write/type something worth reading, so instead I'm simply going to copy the beautifully poetic passage from Job 19:23 - 27 which is used by the author for today:

‘O that my words were written down!
    O that they were inscribed in a book!
O that with an iron pen and with lead
    they were engraved on a rock for ever!
For I know that my Redeemer lives,
    and that at the last he will stand upon the earth;
and after my skin has been thus destroyed,
    then in my flesh I shall see God,
whom I shall see on my side,
    and my eyes shall behold, and not another.
My heart faints within me!'

Whether or not our thoughts are preserved, we still have the wonderful promises of the God who never leaves us.

Loving God, help us always to hold fast to the wonderful promise that our redeemer lives and will never fail us, even to the end of time. Amen.