Sunday evening reflections

As water to the thirsty, as beauty to the eyes,
as strength that follows weakness, as truth instead of lies,
as songtime, and springtime, and summertime to be,
so is my Lord, my living Lord, so is my Lord to me.

Like calm instead of clamour, like peace that follows pain,
like meeting after parting, like sunshine after rain,
like moonlight and starlight and sunlight on the sea,
so is my Lord, my living Lord, so is my Lord to me.

As sleep that follows fever, as gold instead of grey,
as freedom after bondage, as sunshine to the day,
as home to the traveller, and all he longs to see,
so is my Lord, my living Lord, so is my Lord to me.

Timothy Dudley-Smith

OK, it's not "A debtor to mercy alone", but it does express well the sheer refreshment and satisfaction of faith in Christ.

Last night was an unusual experience. Daniel, Samy Foucachon's nephew, ex of Lyon but now living in Moscow, Idaho, married his beloved Lydia. And the marriage was webcast. Daniel and I have never met but we have corresponded by email, etc., so I looked in on the wedding - 11pm our time and it was all over by midnight. American weddings are brief ! They looked a splendid couple, Lydia gorgeous in her white gown with a colourful bouquet and Daniel imposing in his dark suit.

This morning we were meeting with the Eglise Libre de Pessac at the Bagatelle Hospital Social Centre. Samy preached on Bartimeus - faith, its content and its outworking.

It was a nice service, a little different from our usual format, and afterwards we ate together and chatted.

Emmanuel, the pastor at the Eglise Libre, came and sat at our table and we chatted about the weekly radio slots he does on RCF Bordeaux - a Christian Radio Station (broadly Christian, you understand). Emmanuel presents "Point de vue Evangélique" and usually speaks from a Bible passage but another time we presented the student work in Bordeaux. I told him about my experiences at BBC Radio Cymru, and the sheer fun of live broadcasting.

Then we talked about the anglophones and the project of the International English-language service. A lady in his congregation is Anglo-Française and she passed on her email address and phone number as she is interested in getting involved.

We talked about witness in the streets and on the quays of Bordeaux, too, and the special times when the city is out in the streets. Emmanuel is a good guy and is president of the French Protestant Federation here in Bordeaux.

It was good to see some of our students there and most of our young guys. A Brazilian student was with us for the first time - she's from Pat's French class and she wants to come to the Service in English next week and also to the English class on Saturday.

It was a useful time. And we always eat so well, too !

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A bit about music exams in UK and France

They're really different. I think I have already mentioned that while in the UK people generally find a private teacher for their instrument, or do it through a school scheme, here there are municipal music school, conservatoires and so on. The situation is a little more complex than I had first understood, because the schools vary in the rigidity of their organisation: the most, the conservatoires, next the municipals, then the associations. Our music school is an association, but it tends to apply the standards of the municipal schools with its programme of cycles, etc. Britain - grade 1 to 8, grade 8 being roughly equivalent to A-level, pre university/conservatoire. France - 3 cycles, each taking about 4 years, with 3ème cycle being roughly equivalent to grade 8. Theory of music - UK to take grade 8 you need theory grade 5. In France you study theory alongside your instrumental studies, very slowly. Catrin's flute music is MUCH more difficult than the stuff she does in theor...
Read more

Good news from my sermon buddy

Yesterday we went over my script from August 13. There really wasn't much she had taken exception to. Once or twice she wondered quite what I was getting at (they had the same problem at Deeside, I think...) and I do have difficulties with the word " de ", but then she said "Who doesn't?" So I felt very encouraged. I also took the opportunity to ask her about one or two things: 1) Direct preaching. Like I used to in Britain, I preach saying you - using "vous" when I am talking to the whole wide world and "tu" when I want it to feel as if I am addressing each person individually. French preachers tend to say rather "What will we do, what will one do". So I asked her if she felt my way was too direct, too brutal for the French ear. She said "I think you can get away with it with your English accent". In fact several people have commented on how much they appreciated being spoken to directly in preaching. 2) Liaisons Last...
Read more

A brief sortie to North Wales

 Following the Great Keswick Debacle, when our volunteering at the Keswick café was sabotaged by our assorted indispositions, we had airline tickets to use up. Yes, we had not taken travel insurance, so we paid even more money to change our tickets to fly for a short visit to North Wales. This time we were able to go. We passed extremely slowly through a very crowded Bordeaux airport but in good time to get our plane. All seats in the terminal were taken so we leaned against whatever we could find while waiting to board. Hey, bags need seats, too! though sometimes pointing out to Pat, "No, that's a bag seat", makes the bag find a new refuge on the lap of the person sitting next to it... Once on the plane we quickly found our allocated seats - right at the back on the left hand side - stowed our bags and the flight was smooth and uneventful.  We had 30 minutes in Manchester to disembark, get through immigration , hustle off to the station and board our train for Shotton. I...
Read more