After a lapse of a couple of weeks, today I am back reading - and tracking down stuff to read - so that my forthcoming week in Wales will result in an essay fit for presentation when I next go to Manchester.  Hmm, yes, well, never mind.

Today I've read a couple of papers, by two suitably erudite Baptists (Paul Fiddes and Rob Ellis) each entitled 'God and History.'  They were good papers, I enjoyed reading them - but they left me feeling an odd mixture of 'well at least I haven't found out that someone else has done it yet' and 'why this enormous great gap?'

Each of these papers set out to explore something about how God acts in, and is revealed in, human history, most notably in ways that may appear 'special.'  Much of what they said was useful grist to the mill of what I'm researching and thinking about but, ultimately, each of them turned to the historicity of the resurrection - something that is problematic for historians because it doesn't fit any schemes or methods they may have.  That is fine, it's a good topic to turn to undoubtedly, but it doesn't help me very much, since the kind of events I am interested in are much more 'common or garden.'

It seems that what we have is people mooting that God acts in history - now as then - but leapfrogging everything that lies between the resurrection (or certainly the Acts churches) and now.  The fact that if God was active in the first century and if God is also active now means that God was active - and to some extent being revealed - all along doesn't seem to get connected very much.  Whilst both writers note the dangers of trying to discern HOW God's activity might have been at work in such diverse situations as the Falklands conflict or the assassination of JFK, they still seem to be fixed on 'big' world-stage events.  What about the relatively humdrum machinations of the dear old Baptist movement in Blighty?  Surely we think God is/was active in that too?  I'm not so sure it matters that I can discern the HOW or even the WHAT of God's activity in Baptist history, so much as that it surely happened, in so far as frail and failing humans could 'tune in' to it.  But, unless somehow this can be written into the tale, tentatively, do we just end up perpetuating the gaps in the story?  Hmm.  Tricky.

Ah well, back to work! 

The end of March sees me playing the annual game of checking out car insurance prices - and then deciding whether it is worth the hassle of changing insurers to save a few quid.  It is a very odd game and the advent of price comparison websites only makes it more so, since you are rarely comparing 'apples with apples' as you try to fathom out why insurer A wants up to three times as much money as insurer B for the same car driven by the same person.  Beware small print seems to be the key - what are the excesses, what is included or excluded, etc etc.  Beware monthly payment plans which carry pretty high APR levels.  Oh, and can someone tell me whether it really is worth paying to protect my no claims discount when the whole reason I have it is that in 20-odd years I've never needed to make a claim...?

In the end I opted to switch insurers this year - notionally saving myself £50-£100 on the way (do you actually save what you have not spent?) - and earning a few supermarket loyalty points to boot!  At least that job is now over for another 12 months and I can get back to doing more interesting and rewarding things - like the study I'm meant to be doing this morning.

PS If anyone can explain to me why all my insurance policies increased noticeably when I changed from being a professional engineer to being a minister, I'd be very interested!  Are 'vicars' really a bigger liability?!!

Posting here today - and looking forward to what others have to offer in the days ahead...

Lots of cleverer souls than I have already posted in the BBC Passion, and they've said a lot of the things I think too, only better.  Although there are things I'd want to critique about it, it was, overall a superb piece of television and all credit to the BBC for giving over two and a half hours of prime time broadcasting to show it.

The Philistine within me, on seeing the trailers, had pondered the improbability of the marriage of Thermoman to a forensic scientist, wondered where Pilate had hidden his BT home hub and whether his wife's nightmare was because she'd once again lost the baby photos.  Such is the danger of choosing actors that are so familiar.  For all that, once I actually watched the episodes this did not prove a problem.

There were bits that grated, such as Jesus calling the bread and wine a sacrament, such as Jesus being a fair-skinned sandy-haired westerner, such as some key scenes being located other than the gospels suggest.  But these were outweighted by the bits that inspired - the portrayal of Caiphas as a man seeking to fulfil what he believed was God's call, the tender protrayal of Judas, the humanity of Jesus' agony in Gethsemane.

Overall, I think it was a great achievement.  Some purists will no doubt question the depature from gosel dialogue.  Some will be unhappy with the interpretive slant given to the whole story.  And just maybe some will be curious to know more about this story, this man who walked the earth all those years ago.

A lot of people are talking about the series.  I hope that those of us who count ourselves Jesus' followers will enter positively into discussions, not pointing out what we perceive as errors of fact or doctrine, but adding our insights to those which God has supplied through this work of film, whether the producer realises it or not!

As posted on Wednesday, our planning consent came through this week.  When I announced this at the start of  worship today there was some, though not much, spontaneous applause.

Now here are my weird linkages, for no better reason than none...

The last service (apart from the formal closure service) held in our chapel building took place on 19 December 2004, my 42nd birthday.  The formal notification of our planning consent (rather than informal!) came on 20th March 2008 - the day before my little sister's 42nd birthday...

The gap between these dates is as near as makes no odds 3.25 years - roughly the traditional duration of Jesus' earthly ministry.  I don't think this is particularly significant, it just appeals to my sense of the bizarre.

It would be wishful thinking in extremis to imagine we might reach the next stage by Ascension or Pentecost - but maybe I'll at least know what we need to do next by then.  (If any gentle reader has a 42nd birthday coming up, perhaps they'd better beware...!)  Life, the universe and everything...?  Or just more proof that Catriona, plot and lost can only fit in one order in any given sentence?!