We got a new car a couple of weeks ago. It’s been great driving around town without being noticed! In our last car - which was the only one of it’s kind - i was easily spotted, sometimes too easily. On one occasion I had been pulled over by the police - as part of a random check process - and within minutes the word had reached the church office that the minister had been arrested for drunk driving!!

The truth is that as Christians we are always ‘in the public eye.’ How we conduct ourselves will influence what people think about the One we are following. The question is: if you were an advert for Christ, would you persuade anyone to buy?

That’s a challenge from which there’s no hiding.

We started our Easter Holiday Club yesterday morning (Monday 2nd April) with nearly 90 children in attendance.

That’s what you call a busy church hall.

Anyway, there was one wee girl, just six years old, who was quite upset to begin with. She was feeling alone and somewhat overwhelmed by the noise and the business of it all. Tears started to fall and immediately I began to think of calling her mum and asking her to come and get her.

But one of our leaders had other ideas.

She gave the girl a big hug and took her over to the side to console her. Then, she discovered that there was another girl who was in the same class at school sitting at the next table. She took the now not-so-upset girl to that table and that seemed to do the trick. Anyway, I moved on to other things, knowing that that was in hand.

It was two hours later, at the end of the club, that I became aware of her again. Now, she had a huge smile on her face and couldn’t wait to see her mum - not to escape but to tell her how much fun she’d had! What a great turnaround!

I guess it’s just a small example but it’s what the Church is in the business of doing - making people feel welcome and putting smiles on their faces.

Friday night was spent stretched out on the couch watching the 2010 movie, ‘The Book of Eli‘, starring Denzel Washington. Loved it.

Eli’s life mission is to protect an old copy of the King James Bible, the only Bible known to have survived the nuclear war that has laid waste to the world. He grows to value it and to believe in it and, in the end, because he has read it daily for thirty years, to know it by heart. Even though it is taken from him before he reaches his destination, he is able to convey its contents from memory to the scribe who makes it his task to commit it to paper.

Yet despite his intimate knowledge of the words of scripture, Eli finds himself saying, “I got so caught up reading it every day I forgot to live by what I read.”

Reading and memorising verses from the Bible is one thing. Living by them - in obedience to an Almighty and Loving God - is an entirely different thing.