Thank you for listening

It is something I probably realised back when we spent a weekend in the Irenie Centre near Northampton, maybe a month ago now. I say 'probably' because in thinking about something that thing is changed like cats in safes and the quantum, and in being aware of it too it comes into sharper relief, connects with other things, begins to explain as well as be an explanation. I am going to have so much difficulty in explaining and describing what this thing is beyond saying it quite simply, that:

The greatest influence on the development of who we are as individuals is that thing which we are going to do, namely planting a church in Luton.

Writing it down it seems at once so obvious and too so vague I have almost given up hope (yet again) of writing about it. But I will say, as much for myself as any other, it is the most profound thing I have realised about us and what we are going to do upto this point.

God created us a vast expanse of potential and possibility bested in our infinity only by God himself, such is the reflection of his image. Yet it is in this moment, this very present that there is a particular call, a road to a destination on which potential becomes reality and possibility is filled out with life.

It is as if God says stand and a skeletal frame forms out of ether and primordial jelly, then he says run and muscles which will punch through walls and swim oceans form around the waiting bones as they ease into motion.

This thing we are a part of is bigger than us, so much bigger, but at the same time it is us, and as we approach it we are shaped by it, God speaks us into life. Without us it could not be, without it nor could we be as we are.

We learn to fly that we may seed great clouds of thunder, we learn to sing that avalanches will begin in distant mountains. The Holy Spirit laughs as he whips us round in this wild dance of life.

God's will in Luton, or his plan, or his call, God's Luton is so strong that as we come nearer to it it changes who we are.

I hope you understand something of what I mean.

Thank you for listening.