Weekending

No updates over the weekend, as we had our Church Weekend down in the Glenada Centre in Newcastle. A great weekend, which will long be remembered. Our speaker was Shaun Atkins, Chaplain of The Bedford School, who took us through 1 Samuel 17, looking at David, Goliath and Christ.

Poor exegesis and application in Sunday Schools and sermons normally places the reader as David, facing your giants, and knowing that you'll overcome them through five smooth stones (which, depending on the preacher's ingenuity, will be faith, Bible reading, prayer, church attendance and whatever...). If the Old Testament (indeed the whole of Scripture) is about Jesus - not us - then we shouldn't be cast as David; we're more likely among the Israelite army cowering afraid.

David is a type of Jesus, pointing forward to the work of Christ in taking on the enemy of God's people - our great enemy, death. Jesus has won the great victory, through the unexpected success of the cross. We can then share in the victory of our great king, the Lord's anointed chosen ruler.

The weekend gave us great teaching, and a good re-introduction to 1 Samuel, but there was much more than that. The value of the weekend is the time spent with brothers and sisters in the church family. Time to relax and chat over rivers of tea and coffee and a mountain of buns and cakes. Best of all may have been the talent show on the Saturday evening, with music, quiz, comedy and a special appearance of Mr Stretchy! We'll never look at some people in the same way again!!!

So a deferred day off tomorrow after a busy weekend as I was in full techy mode on recordings and PowerPoint duty. The mp3s from the four main sessions will be available online sometime later this week. And so to bed...