I am sitting in an abnormally tidy (and dusted!) living room, as I am waiting for my house guest and fashion journalist in training Libby Page to arrive (cue polite applause!).  So I thought I'd just give her blog a quick plug... it's called love pink which is just so funny as I 'don't do pink' if I can avoid it.

So, tomorrow we will be doing some bits of filming around Glasgow, at home and maybe even at church as part of her project... I'm kinda looking forward to it.

Just before I began treatment last year I had a private photo shoot which was fun and helped me 'escape' for a while.  There's a nice sense of circularity that now I can put something back by going in front of a camera again.  I'm not great in front of a camera, so I hope she has some good tricks up her sleeve - sure she will have.

I'll report back in due course.

A few folk have noticed that my sidebar linking other blogs has been updated and have asked (off blog) about some of the changes. 

Now and then blogs become 'defunct' because their authors find better things to do with their time.  Other people decide to delete their blogs for various reasons.  Occasionally I feel that my interest in a blog probably isn't shared by my readers. 

This is just to say that I have removed links to one or two blogs on this basis today, and please don't read anything sinister into it!

Today's PAYG used this parable-type thing from Luke 12:42 - 48

The Lord answered: Who are faithful and wise servants? Who are the ones the master will put in charge of giving the other servants their food supplies at the proper time?  Servants are fortunate if their master comes and finds them doing their job.  A servant who is always faithful will surely be put in charge of everything the master owns.  But suppose one of the servants thinks that the master won't return until late.  Suppose that servant starts beating all the other servants and eats and drinks and gets drunk.  If that happens, the master will come on a day and at a time when the servant least expects him.  That servant will then be punished and thrown out with the servants who cannot be trusted.  If servants are not ready or willing to do what their master wants them to do, they will be beaten hard.  But servants who don't know what their master wants them to do will not be beaten so hard for doing wrong.  If God has been generous with you, he will expect you to serve him well.  But if he has been more than generous, he will expect you to serve him even better.

Scary stuff!  A good one for those of us convinced God has called us as ministers to wrestle with periodically.  If I am a servant among servants, entrusted in some way to care for the others, how do I measure up?  I have a feeling this is about far more than material greed and physical violence.  Should Jesus walk in on my church, and see what I'm a-doing-of (or not), what would he think?  Hmm.

This week's service poses the question 'A Christian Family?' and will, I think, be an exploration of something around intergenerational relationships.  Whilst the topic doesn't feel quite as 'hairy' as last week's, it is not easy - since families come in many shapes, sizes and guises. I will start by debunking the myth of 'we four and no more' as some sort of Christian ideal, and do so by reference to historical and Biblical insights.

Whilst walking to work this morning, I was pondering the, relatively few, Bible stories that are about families.  That is, stories that extend beyond the bland statement of their existence.  We have, for example the Abraham family, two women, two sons, and dysfunction.  Or the Isaac story, with a devious wife and squabbling sons; more dysfunction.  Or Jacob's family - two wives, two concubines, twelve sons and some daughters, with all manner of intrigue and awfulness; yup, dysfunction again.  Move to the New Testament and, I hate to say it, but we find more than hints of dysfunction in the 'Holy Family' itself, with Jesus' relatives on one occasion being reported as thinking he had gone mad.  And that's before we look at the things Jesus says about breaking up families!

Rather than the Bible giving us family examples to aspire to, we find stories that make the average British Soap look tame!

The Bible gives us household codes (e.g. Ephesians 5/6) that hint at a different set of attitudes but, I fear, fix the parent-child relationship as an adult-child one, at least as interpreted by any commentator or theologian I have read.  Over the last day or so, I have read stuff on theology of family that is essentially a (needed and laudable) attempt to develop a theology of childhood and of 'childness' (the childlike qualities advocated by Jesus) but nothing, not one jot about adult children and elderly parents, or grown-up siblings, or grandparents and grandchildren.  Easier by far to find Biblical examples of 'blended' families than to find something helpful to say, for example, to the overseas student thousands of miles from a blood relative or the elderly spinster who has no-one left apart from a distant cousin...

I thought this one might be easier... more fool me!

Recently someone sent me a quotation, which was attributed to Pope John Paul II.  When I googled it to try find out more, I discovered that the same quotation is attributed to such diverse people as Augustine and Wesley.  I think that's good, as an implied ecumenism is what it's about:

In essentials, unity

In non-essentials, liberty

In all things, charity

Whilst we may feel we want to 'unpack' or 'unpick' what we mean by 'essential' or 'non-essential', and that can be demanding and dangerous, if we focus on the third statement - the over-riding attitude of love, humility and compassion that inform 'charity' then maybe we are on the right road.

Love God, love your neighbour, love yourself.... love is the greatest Spiritual gift.... God is love

Words like this trip easily from the tongue; living them is a lifetime's endeavour, and then some.

Apologies to Gatherers, you will see this quote again soon in church, but it seemed too useful to keep locally.