Continuing the theme of houses, we looked at the amazing fact that we are God’s house. Hebrews 3:6 says “But Christ is faithful as the Son over God’s house. And we are his house, if indeed we hold firmly to our confidence and the hope in which we glory.” (Heb 3:6) It’s an absolutely amazing truth in the Bible that God chooses not to dwell in buildings but in people. In the Old Testament we read how the glory of God dwelt in the Tabernacle and later in the Temple built by Solomon, but Stephen tells us in Acts 7 that “the Most High does not live in houses made by human hands” (Acts 7:48). We can’t limit God to a building, however ornate or magnificent the building may be… and I’ve visited some pretty magnificent cathedrals lately!

Paul asks the Corinthian church: “Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honour God with your bodies.” (1 Cor 6:19-20)When we become Christians, Paul tells us, we become new creations (2 Cor 5:17). There is a work of regeneration, or new birth, that goes on in us when we accept Christ as our Saviour and from then on, we are becoming a dwelling in which God lives. God’s Spirit is known as the Holy Spirit and therefore we need to be holy too, for “just as he who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do; 16 for it is written: “Be holy, because I am holy” (1 Pet 1:15-16). There has to be a spring-cleaning in our lives when God comes to dwell in us. Light and darkness can’t co-exist in the same building. Dirt and cleanliness don’t mix together. God comes in and the cleaning-up process begins.

Fortunately for us, the restoration and renovation work is God’s work in us. He’s the architect and master builder. He is the Builder, as Isaiah 62:5 tells us. All He wants from us is the willingness to let Him in – to open the door of our hearts (Rev 3:20) to allow Him access to every part of our lives so that He can make His dwelling with us.

‘Through the Keyhole’ was a TV programme that looked at celebrity houses. You basically had to guess who the celebrity was from the house they lived in.

The family service last night looked at the theme of houses and Mark’s quiz had us guessing who lived in these houses or the names of these houses. It’s a good job we worked in teams, or I would have failed miserably! See how you do…











Answers:

1) Buckingham Palace, home of the Royal family

2) Taj Mahal

9) The Old Parsonage in Haworth, home of the Bronte sisters

11) Rovers Return (Coronation Street)

15) The Flintstones live here!

The mystery prize was reserved for guessing Frank Sinatra’s home… which no one did. Another tough quiz!

We also had 2 birthdays to celebrate:

Mark asked us two very pointed questions this morning:

* What type of role models do we make?

* Who is our role model?

We’ve all had people we’ve looked up to as we grow up; Mark confessed to having ‘the Fonz’ as his childhood hero (who wouldn’t want to be so cool and popular, not to mention also having a motorbike?!)



A role model can be admired for all kinds of (sometimes dubious) reasons, including their fashion styles, make-up, clothes, wealth and possessions. But we all imitate something and it’s important for us to learn to imitate God (Eph 5:1-2) and to be good role models for those around us, especially our children, young people and new Christians.

Proverbs 4:1 urges us to ‘listen to a father’s instructions.’ Parents are role models, whether they like it or not, training children (see Proverbs 22:6). Paul urges Timothy to ‘set an example for the believers in speech, in conduct, in love, in faith and in purity’ (1 Tim 4:12). That’s the kind of example we should all be setting: thinking about what we say (and how we say it), what we do, showing love and faith and purity in everything we do (see also Neh 5:9). The list of qualities that a role model should have is even longer in Titus 2:1-8, including self-control, temperance, integrity, soundness of speech, faith, love and endurance.

Jesus is our ultimate role model. If we are to be imitators of God, as dearly loved children, we have to look at Jesus and follow His example. He came to serve (see John 13:14-17) – we are blessed if we do what He did, He explained, which means learning to serve each other in practical, demonstrable ways (a lesson John clearly learned as he taught in 1 John 3:16-17). Whether we like it or not, our lives are daily being observed by others. We are ‘living letters’, known and read by everyone (see 2 Cor 3:2-3). Let’s be the kind of role model that will draw others to Jesus and inspire them to follow Him.



Michael Card’s ‘The Poem Of Your Life’ captures the ideas in 2 Corinthians 3 so well. Our lives are being shaped by God daily. So often we feel insignificant and as though no one sees, but God is shaping us and moulding us into His image:

“Life is a song we must sing with our days

A poem with meaning more than words can say

A painting with colours no rainbow can tell

A lyric that rhymes either heaven or hell.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ofaLGuviY5w

I love looking at stained glass windows. I think the way the light shines through the coloured glass and the way they often tell stories through pictures are amazing. Stained glass is glass that has been coloured by adding metallic salts during its manufacture. The coloured glass is crafted into stained glass windows in which small pieces of glass are arranged to form patterns or pictures, held together (traditionally) by strips of lead and supported by a rigid frame. Painted details and yellow stain are often used to enhance the design. The term stained glass is also applied to windows in which the colours have been painted onto the glass and then fused to the glass in a kiln.

Stained glass, as an art and a craft, requires the artistic skill to conceive an appropriate and workable design, and the engineering skills to assemble the piece. A window must fit snugly into the space for which it is made, must resist wind and rain, and also, especially in the larger windows, must support its own weight. Many large windows have withstood the test of time and remained substantially intact since the late Middle Ages. In Western Europe they constitute the major form of pictorial art to have survived. In this context, the purpose of a stained glass window is not to allow those within a building to see the world outside or even primarily to admit light but rather to control it. For this reason stained glass windows have been described as ‘illuminated wall decorations’.

One of my favourite stained glass windows was built to celebrate the Millennium and is in the refectory at Chester Cathedral. I think I like this window so much because, being newer, you see it in all its glory, not obscured by dirt and grime which spoil so many older windows (cleaning these windows is definitely a skill in itself!) and also because it looks at the theme of Creation. I like the image of the dove and the hand of God you can see in the window:



On holiday this year, we looked at lots of stained glass windows in various cathedrals:

Stained glass windows often tell Biblical stories (Gloucester Cathedral):



Balliol College chapel:



Keble College chapel:



A whole row of stained glass windows at Lincoln Cathedral:



And on a less grandiose scale, but still great to look at, the windows at church:





This morning I was reading Colossians 1 in the Message version, that great passage talking about the supremacy of Christ:

“He was supreme in the beginning and—leading the resurrection parade—he is supreme in the end. From beginning to end he’s there, towering far above everything, everyone. So spacious is he, so roomy, that everything of God finds its proper place in him without crowding. Not only that, but all the broken and dislocated pieces of the universe—people and things, animals and atoms—get properly fixed and fit together in vibrant harmonies, all because of his death, his blood that poured down from the cross.” (Col 1:18-20)

Aaron Shust, in the song ‘Long Live The King’ says ‘You assemble all our broken, shattered pieces/ More beautiful than I have ever known.’ I often think of life as being rather like stained glass. Circumstances come along that shatter us. We feel our lives are just left in pieces and we cannot imagine how God could ever work those circumstances for good. But God works with broken pieces, just as the stained glass artist has to work with small pieces of glass and has visions of grandeur that are far more beautiful than simple plain glass. Each experience we go through adds colours to our lives and God is able to put those pieces together ‘in vibrant harmonies’.

When we were at Lincoln Cathedral last week, we learned that during the Civil War, the Bishop’s Eye (a window in the cathedral) was blown to pieces by gunfire. The pieces of glass were collected up and later re-assembled, but the only problem was that no one knew where the pieces were supposed to go and so the resulting window doesn’t quite tell the story which the artist originally wanted it to tell! That won’t ever happen to our lives. God is working all things together for good, fixing and fitting all the ‘broken, dislocated pieces’ together to create something that will be ‘more beautiful than I have ever known’. We may not see it now, but our lives are becoming a stained glass window for God!

“The aim and final end of all music should be none other than the glory of God and the refreshment of the soul.” —J.S. Bach

Bach wrote the initials SDG on all his music manuscripts (Soli Deo Gloria, “To God alone be glory”). He knew what it was to give God all the glory and how to honour God with everything he did.

We visited Lincoln on Monday and I was struck again by the sheer magnificence of the cathedral there, an architectural reflection of this principle that God is worth everything and deserves our very best. To think that these buildings were crafted by stonemasons without all the machinery and technology we take for granted today is amazing.







In the cathedral, instead of the usual ‘stations of the cross’, an artist had made the ‘stations of the forest’, carved from wood. Using wood in an imaginative and innovative way, William Fairbank has created an astonishing set of wood panels involving intricate carving, inlay and juxtaposition of different woods to create a narrative of the journey Jesus makes to the Cross and Resurrection. The picture below is the final carving, symbolising light, illumination, insight and glory.

The Westminster Catechism (another type of creed, intended to help people understand the basics of the Christian faith) says that ‘the chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.’ Whether through music, art or architecture, or any other medium you can think of, God alone deserves all the glory.

‘To God Alone’ (Aaron Shust):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dfZMKfu86z0

Following on from recent thoughts on what we believe, I’ve often wondered what my own ‘creed’ would look like. I wholeheartedly endorse the Apostles’ Creed and Nicene Creed quoted earlier, but sometimes it’s good to try and put into words things we don’t find easy to articulate. It can be good to ‘flesh out’ our beliefs, trying to find ways of expressing them in more modern language. Below is what I’ve come up with. It’s definitely not perfect and not as good as the creeds devised over centuries by eminent theologians! It doesn’t attempt to define the Trinity or understand God, but it does try to look at some of the issues that arise from our acceptance of the apostolic creeds.

“I believe

that God is firmly in control, so worry is a waste of time.

I believe

that there is merit in human effort, even though I don’t understand how this sits alongside divine works

I believe

that the laws of paradox and reversal are written into the universe by a divine hand and that mystery cannot be fathomed but has to be received by faith

I believe

that divine principles govern the world and that nature is not above God

I believe

that most people rarely glimpse the divine mystery that is God and that we need people who can articulate mystery to us

I believe

that worship is the proper response of people to God

I believe

that worship precedes action and must permeate all meaningful action

I believe

that belief must fuel action and inform life choices

I believe

that what we do in the furnace of life must be shaped in the quiet of intimacy

I believe

that there is more than the visible and material.”

What do you believe?