Tonight is the family service for September at 6 p.m., looking at the adventures of Igor. Intrigued? You need to come along to find out how this iguana can teach us truths about God!

Midweek meetings also resume this week. We will be having a prayer meeting on Thursday (6th September) at 7.30 p.m. and will be resuming Bible studies the following Thursday (13th September), continuing our studies on the General Epistles, starting with James. Everyone is very welcome to attend these midweek meetings, which are crucial to building our understanding and faith.

The youth club and Parent ‘n’ Toddler group will also resume this week, on Monday evening and Friday morning respectively.

Later in September we will be having the Macmillan Coffee Morning. This will take place on Saturday 29th September from 10 a.m. until 12 noon. Coffee mornings take place every Saturday, but proceeds on 29th September will all go to the cancer charity Macmillan.

You are very welcome to attend any of these meetings. Sunday meetings continue with a communion service each Sunday at 10.30 a.m. and a family service at 6 p.m. We also celebrate communion on the second Sunday evening of each month.

Stephen preached on the subject of heavenly marriage last night. Marriage (hotly debated in our current society, but traditionally recognised as the union between a man and a woman as indicated by the Genesis account, involving the commitment and covenant between those two parties) is one of the ways the relationship between God and His church is pictured.

Is 54:5 says “For your Maker is your husband – the Lord Almighty is His name – the Holy One of Israel is your Redeemer; he is the called the God of all the earth.” In this verse, we see that the relationship we have with God is personal, but it is also collective in that God is the husband of all the church and is also the God of all the earth.

John 15:12-13 talks about the love that should characterise our relationships. Earthly marriage takes commitment between two people; heavenly marriage also involves God’s commitment to us (so great that Jesus laid down His life for us) and our commitment to Him.

Earthly marriage has a timescale of life on this earth attached to it (the wedding vows explicitly say ‘until death separates us.’) The heavenly marriage God wants is eternal, however (‘I will betroth you to me for ever; I will betroth you in righteousness and justice, in love and compassion. I will betroth you in faithfulness and you will acknowledge the Lord’ Hosea 2:19-20). Even death cannot break God’s commitment to us.

Earthly marriage brings many blessings and advantages (security, happiness, commitment, love, even – in olden times – a dowry and wealth!) The heavenly marriage God gives us brings righteousness, justice, love, compassion and faithfulness to us.

Our response to all that God offers us in this covenant of marriage should be heartfelt and total (see Deut 6:5). We are to love God with all we have and make ourselves ready for the wedding of the Lamb (Rev 19:7). The heavenly marriage we have with God sets us apart for His purposes for ever. We were chosen by God and we also choose Him, to live in union with Him for all eternity.

Mark continued looking at 1 Peter 2:9-10 on Sunday morning, this time asking the question ‘What am I to God and to others?’ His main conclusion was that we are beautiful.

We are the apple of God’s eye (Ps 17:8), so valuable to Him that we were worth the sacrifice of Christ (Rom 5:8).Even while we were still offensive to God, Christ died for us. He has clothed us in a robe of righteousness, purified us by HIs precious blood and has made us beautiful in our time (Eccl 3:11)

The inner beauty Christ nurtures in us is then revealed to others. God looks for a humble heart (Ps 149:4); those who are humble recognise their position in relation to God and are not always striving after the world’s estimation of value. Micah 6:8 shows us the things that please God: to love mercy, to act justly and to walk humbly with God. When we live in right relationship to God, we will live in a right manner and will be kind and forgiving, abasing ourselves before God and living at peace with other people. As we do what is right, it pleases God and the love of God is shown in us. Because God has beautified us, we have an obligation to show that beauty in how we live in our own generation.

The refurbishment to the ladies’ toilets and kitchen floor has been done gradually over a period of about six to seven weeks. For much of that time, nothing much seemed to be happening, yet all the preparation work took a lot of time and effort. Dave and Joan have spent a lot of time in the building overseeing workmen and helping with various jobs, unseen to most people who turned up on Sundays, peeped behind the curtain and didn’t think much was going on! (It was interesting at the anniversary party last week to notice all those who had been involved in the plumbing go straight to the toilets before even greeting people to find out what the finished work was looking like!)

A number of thoughts have occurred to me as I have watched the work progress and seen the photos of the intermediate stages, many of which were unseen to the majority of church members, myself included.

1) Before there can be real progress and new things, there often has to be a period when things look even worse than they did before. When God talks about making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland (Is 43:19), we get very excited, but sometimes there has to be a stripping away of the old before the new can come. Ephesians 4 talks about what we have to put off before ever we can put on the new things of the Spirit (see Eph 4:22-32).

2) Real progress often takes time. We tend to be very impatient people and want the new stuff NOW, but God’s timescales are often very different to ours. Galatians 4:4 talks about Christ coming at the ‘set time’, the ‘right time’. Paul says ‘at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ dies for the ungodly.’ (Rom 5:6) When it comes to timing, we need to leave it to the professionals and not try to rush things along. Plaster needs time to dry before it can be painted. Things take longer than we would like. What is true in the natural is often also true in the spiritual realm. We are works in progress. God hasn’t finished with us yet and what we will be is not yet fully seen. “For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.” (1 Cor 13:12)

3) We all have different talents and giftings. I would be absolutely useless at plumbing or plastering, but it’s always a pleasure to watch professionals do the job they have been trained to do. Sometimes, though, when we watch others do jobs for which we are not skilled, what they are doing doesn’t always make a lot of sense to us. That doesn’t really matter in the long run. When I mark books in a lesson, pupils ask me how I can do it so quickly, scanning work and noticing mistakes so efficiently. Years of practice and a keen eye for the written word make that job easy for me. Years of practice and skill at plumbing and plastering make that job easy for plumbers and plasterers. We may not understand someone else’s talents, and how they work may seem chaotic in the intermediate stages, but the end result is worth admiring. We too may not understand what God is doing in the intermediate stages of our lives (‘Why have You let this happen to me? What’s going on now, God?!’), but we can trust Him to work all things together for good and know that He is the ultimate professional!

The refurbishment in the ladies’ toilets was much more extensive and involved closing off the area for several weeks while the work was being done:

This is how it looked before all the work started:

Then all the old stuff had to be taken out:

We had to strip everything back to the brickwork (sounds familiar?!) before re-plastering could be done:

Then the re-plastering was done:

Plumbing and painting had to be sorted:

Piping was boxed in:

Preparation was made for the new flooring to go down:

It’s starting to look like a real floor again!

Then the new toilets and sink were installed:

Cubicle doors were fitted:

We also fitted a new hand-dryer and radiator:

Doors were added to the cubicles:

And there we are…!

A lot of refurbishment work has gone on in church over the school holidays. In the kitchen, new plinth heaters and new flooring have been put in and the ladies’ toilets have also been completely refurbished.

New plinth heaters in the kitchen:

Fitting the flooring in the kitchen:

New flooring:

Our thanks go to those who have helped in any way and we are happy to provide free advertising for a job well done!

The ladies’ toilets involved much more work… more photos to follow!