Dave spoke this morning at Cherry Tree Court from Luke 7:36-50, the story which tells us of the woman anointing Jesus at the home of Simon the Pharisee. Luke often gives us personal details not found in other gospels (the Parable of the Prodigal Son and the story of Zacchaeus are only found in Luke’s gospel, for example), and he clearly relates to the woman’s heartfelt response to Christ’s lavish love.

The woman is described as having a ‘sinful life’ and she comes to be with Jesus because she knows she desperately needs His forgiveness and unconditional love. The depth of her repentance and love is shown in the lavish gift she pours on Him – perfume costing a year’s wage, poured from an alabaster jar (in itself a beautiful pot.) She cries wracking sobs and weeps tears of shame and gratitude in an outpouring of emotion which clearly made Simon, the host, uncomfortable and made others discuss the waste of such extravagant devotion. Jesus, however, never views devotion in coldly clinical terms, remarking that those who have been forgiven much love much, whilst those who have been forgiven little love little. Simon’s curiosity in Jesus is intellectual; he presumably is confident of his own righteousness and therefore can remain detached from Him. Those who know their need for love and forgiveness cannot be so measured in their response to the lavish, unconditional love which Jesus offers us freely – but at great cost to Himself. The woman’s selfless devotion prepares Jesus for the burial which is to come.

Do we realise what God has done for us? Do we understand how desperate our situation is without God? Only when we see the depth of our sin and the desperation of life without God can we come to appreciate all He has done for us.

‘I am broken at Your feet
Like an alabaster jar
Every piece of who I am
Laid before Your majesty

I will bow my life
At Your feet
At Your feet
My lips
So lost for words
Will kiss Your feet
Kiss Your feet

Oh the gravity of You
Draws my soul unto its knees
I will never be the same
I am lost and found in You.’ (‘Alabaster’, Rend Collective)

We also had a birthday to celebrate:

Geometry is defined as the branch of mathematics which is concerned with the properties and relations of points, lines, surfaces, solids, and higher dimensional analogues. I struggle even to understand that definition! I vividly remember maths lessons at school dealing with shapes. Everyone else loved these lessons, because 2D and 3D shapes would be brought out and all these kinesthetic learners who loved handling things and learning from touch revelled in these practical lessons. I can simply remember agonising over how many sides and faces and edges a square had and wondering who on earth really cared about all these different shapes…

The linguist in me, however, loved the names for these shapes. Triangles obviously had three sides  and three angles: the name itself told you that! A pentagon was a five-sided shape because its very name told me so (from pente and gonia, which is Greek for five and angle.)

A hexagon in a six-sided polygon for similar reaons (hex is Greek for six). I rather like hexagons, because they tessellate so well:

I also remember feeling a deep satisfaction when I first learned that France is often called ‘the Hexagon’ because of its shape:

Thus, my love of languages kept me going through heptagons, octagons, nonagons, decagons, hendecagons, dodecagons and the like, even when I was entirely bored with counting sides and learning other geometrical terms related to these shapes!

Today, that interest in words (rather than the amazing world of shapes) resurfaced. Garry, in his job as a mechanical engineer, often has to deal with drawings and turn these drawings into a 3D reality. He did it when designing a model of the Buckminster Fullerene (affectionately known as the ‘Bucky Ball’, technically known as a spherical fullerene molecule with the formula C60.) The model, made by Garry,  is shown below with Nobel Prize Winner Professor Sir Harold Kroto who discovered this molecule.

Now he is on with a task for church (to be revealed at a later date, hopefully!) which requires similar skill and when I was surveying the drawings, I asked what those ‘plastic-cup like things’ are called. (You can see I struggle with words when I don’t know the correct ones!) He told me these were frusta. Agog with anticipation at discovering a new word, I was back in the world of geometry. A frustum is the portion of a solid (normally a cone, as in this case, or a pyramid) that lies between two parallel plans, cutting it. Confused? It looks like this:

I have no doubt that Garry and others will have great delight in wrestling the properties of this shape into the design they actually want. For me, the joy is in discovering that the Latin word ‘frustum’ simply means a ‘piece cut off‘. A new word to add to my vocabulary. I’ll probably never have cause to use it again, not being an engineer, mathematician, aerospace engineer (where frustum is the common term for the fairing between two stages of a multistage rocket like Saturn V, which is shaped like a truncated cone) or computer graphic designer (where it describes  the three-dimensional region which is visible on the screen, formed by a clipped pyramid.) But I will feel immensely satisfied at knowing what these people are talking about in future!

We are immensely grateful for the people at church who volunteer their time and efforts to help improve the building. Thank you to Garry, Stephen, Stacey, Jade and James who were willing volunteers in painting and to Mark who put up the scaffolding for us on Friday night.

James’s height was definitely useful, given the height of the room!

Stephen bowing to his father’s superior skills?

Jade in her coveralls:

Stacey and her cloud dream:

However, there are countless more people to be thanked. The church’s leadership gladly invest time and money into everything that is done in the church. Once the decorating is completed, a new floor surface will be fitted along with a sink to facilitate painting and other messy activities. Dave and Ray were busy discussing the best location for the sink, gladly giving their plumbing expertise another outing!

Those helping with the coffee morning willingly kept workers going, supplying them with drinks and biscuits. Stepladders were loaned so that more people could be involved in the work at the same time. All of this teamwork is greatly appreciated by us all. THANK YOU!

In our continuing desire to improve the facilities we are able to offer local people, we have recently begun work on decorating the children’s room. We began to clear the room of furniture and put down cardboard to cover the flooring:

The first job was to make the notice boards into chalk boards so that these can be used not only to display work but as a teaching aid for Sunday School:

Then a group of volunteers started work on the ceiling, turning this into a blue sky with fluffy clouds!

Concentrating on the clouds:

The finished ceiling:

Next, walls were tackled:

Round one completed:

Continuing teamwork:

Glossing:

Goods ‘fit for purpose’ are ‘well suited for their designated role or purpose.’  The chillies we have been lovingly tending since October last year have provided us with endless amusement and spiritual enlightenment, but if the proof of the pudding is in the eating, then presumably the success of our chilli-growing can only really be measured once the said chillies have been eaten.

Yesterday was the day when, upon inspection of the red chillies, we decided that if we left them any longer, they would start to shrivel. So we plucked the first one:

We plucked another two and then chopped them, ready to eat (and ready to re-plant their seeds, so they can continue to fill God’s command to reproduce!)

I’m pleased to report that these chillies had flavour, fire and quite an after-burn!

What is our purpose in life, then? (other than to eat chillies, of course….!) The Westminster Shorter Catechism asks what is man’s chief end (or purpose) and answers this ‘man’s chief end is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.’ How are we doing when we evaluate our lives according to this criterion? Are we fit for purpose? We are undoubtedly still being pruned, shaped and refined by God, but we need to examine our purpose regularly and refuse to live by any other standard imposed on us. All that really matters is found in Christ and our purpose needs to reflect His centrality and importance.

There is a proverb which says ‘The road to hell is paved with good intentions.’

It perhaps echoes Jesus’s words about the narrow and wide roads in Matt 7:13-14: ‘Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.‘ Certainly it indicates that for us to live well (and arrive at the best destination!), we need more than good intentions.

Eugene Peterson says ‘Good intentions are worthless if they are not coupled with character development… Intentions must mature into commitments if we are to become persons with definition, with character, with substance.’ (‘Run With The Horses’, P 161) We all know people who are well-meaning, full of enthusiasm and good ideas, but who lack follow-through. Casting Crowns tackle this dilemma in their song ‘The Altar and the Door’, which looks at how easily we make vows before God at the altar and yet fail to fulfil these in our everyday lives. (‘How can I be sure I will not lose my follow through between the altar and the door?’)

Clearly, we need help if our good intentions are to mature into commitments. God Himself does not lack follow through (in their song ‘Dream For You,’ Casting Crowns say ‘Just trust me, I will follow through; You can follow me.’ ) He is utterly faithful to fulfil every promise He makes (2 Cor 1:20). Rend Collective’s song ‘Faithful’ reminds us:

‘There’s no words that You’ve spoken
That haven’t brought hope
No promise You’ve made
You haven’t fulfilled…You’re faithful to the end.’

Our part, as Hebrews 10:23 reminds is, is to hold unswervingly to the hope we profess because He who promised is faithful. As we hold on to God, He shapes and re-shapes us, defines and re-defines us, gives us substance and character which enable us to grow into the people He has called us to be, people of inestimable worth and value, people who persevere, people who ‘deal with the reality of life, discover truth, create beauty, act out love.’ (Eugene Peterson, ‘Run With The Horses’, P 150)