I'm feeling a little homesick as the preacher in the morning Bible studies is Vaughan Roberts, rector of St Ebbe's in Oxford, who joined the church staff when I was attending as a student. It's great to hear him again as he goes through Romans 1-8. Yesterday he gave a very useful illustration of justification and sanctification. Imagine God can only accept purple people into his presence but the human race is green and doomed to destruction because rebellion has changed its God-given colour. By his willing death on the cross for us Jesus has slipped a sheet of purple cellophane in front of those who believe and God now accepts them as purple: they have been justified, the consequences of their rebellion paid for. However, too often they only know how to behave as green people. That's when the Holy Spirit goes behind the purple cellophane and starts to paint them so the green truly becomes purple - sanctification which is a life-long process.
It's not all meetings. There are plenty of ice cream shops to sample and this afternoon we hired kayaks for James and Ruth and a double canoe for Fraser and me and headed onto Lake Derwentwater. James and Ruth were like ducks on the water. As for the canoers: if negotiating a double canoe was part of a pre-marriage course the numbers of weddings would plummet. Thankfully Fraser and I have been married for 19 years so eventually managed to work out an amicable system!
England can be beautiful too.
