Rollercoaster...

It's been a massif week, everythings been happening BIG TIME! To emphasize the highs and lows, I'm sitting listening to Brooke Fraser, - don't tell Amy ;) - "...you are the one I want..." I guess that word "want" means something important to me.

Thursday was the first time I have "officiated" at a wedding. It was a strange sensation to stand infront of a room of almost complete strangers and make a pronouncement of marriage, (performance utterance, speech-act theory etc...) and it becomes so.

John and Marianne, the couple, wanted communion. John brought a bottle of sherry cause he wanted a good, solid communion, with a bit of a bite to it. There was a problem which became obvious as I was setting up the small nip glasses for the punters to drink from. The Sherry was not red. What's worse, it was yellow. Don't get me wrong, it tasted alright, that I can assure you, I made sure of that more than a few times before the service. Had to calm down somehow!

However, I felt like a fraud calling it the "Blood" of Christ when it clearly looked like another part or our Lord's bodily fluids...

The wedding went remarkably smoothly for a first time, but one of the highlights was being able to share with one of the guests, I'll call him "Bob", how God is not restricted to one denomination's slant of Christian ethics - specifically surrounding alcohol. This was his stumbling block. A Church who could not drink. I know there are a lot of varying opinions on alcohol, but having your entire faith understanding held to ransom by whether or not one consumes alcohol... Please, grow some priorities!

Anyway, it was refreshing to talk with Bob, and I sensed that his position on God and his people had shifted somewhat when I left. There was no big conversion story, but I think he is more willing to explore a God who is not going to hand him a "Go directly to Hell, do not pass Go, do not collect $200" card just because he wants a beer with his mates.