01 Jan Vicars’ Blog – January 2019 – Is Life a Peach, or an Orange? Curious?
Looking for a FRESH thinking in this new year? Is it a new diet or author? Our new year’s resolution could be to discover where God is in our everyday life. Is life a peach or an orange?
We sometimes think of our lives as divided up into segments –one for work, one for exercise and leisure, one for family: older relatives, children and their activities, one for ourselves, and so on. Oh and one for God and church. God has his own slot which we mostly give him on Sundays, or perhaps a few prayers during the day. We try to balance all of these in our lives and wonder why it feels like we are trying to spin plates, don’t have time for all the things we want to do and feel like it’s hard to please anyone! Sound familiar? Maybe a little over-exaggerated.
A new year is a good time to re-examine the priorities in our lives. James Lawrence (author of Growing Leaders) says, what works better that a balanced life, is a blended life. A segmented life is like an orange, but a blended life is like a peach. If we put God at the centre of all we do, everything else falls into place. God is in everything we do already; all those people and places that are important to us. Realising that God is with us and has even put us in those places, makes a huge difference to the way we see our work places and family commitments.
It’s what Mark Greene, author of the Imagine project, calls our “Front line”. He says “We may be old or young, healthy or infirm, rich or poor, employed or not, radically cutting edge or relatively retro; whoever we are, as Christians, we have at least one thing in common. We each have a Front line.” But does God care about our work?
We will be exploring all this as we take on “Life on the Front Line” in all House groups and in sermons in all Services starting on Sunday 13th January. The course runs for 6 weeks and there will be new groups available for those who are not in house groups, but who would like to do the course. You can find out more about the LICC (London Institute of Contemporary Christianity) and the Life on the Frontline Course on their website. Cathy says: “I am very excited about this series as it challenges the sacred-secular divide which is so prevalent in our culture. It is good to be reminded that God is with us Monday to Saturday as well as Sunday: in our work place, or wherever we are during most of the week – our Front line.”
We wish you a blessed and joyful New Year.