Remember.

Sometimes I forget.
For people who know me this is not headline news… but it is import in understanding me.

Sometimes I may even forget you.
I don’t mean to be offensive, it just happens that way. I remember (many years ago) walking through town with a friend. We bumped into a lady from church [who I knew very well] and we started chatting. After a bit she enquired if I was going to introduce her to my friend. I immediately apologised for my rudeness: “I’m so sorry; where are my manner. Anyway, Suzanne [for that was my indeed my friend’s name] this is……………” The pause did not end. I had forgotten her name. It was gone, completely gone! The ground refused to open up under me leaving me to apologise for the second time in the conversation as I admitted to having forgotten her name.
Her name was Emma. Emma Emma Emma!
I can remember it now. In fact I may never forget it again!

The reason I am saying this is because it is good to remind ourselves of the obvious sometimes.

In house group Karen did a really cool interactive study with us.
She had a bunch of ordinary objects and challenged us to use them in expressing to the group something about God. It was awesome!
(Good training for street preaching. Jesus used to tell impromptu parables etc based on things that were surrounding the crowd he was talking to. He was keeping it relevant and accessible as he spoke about the kingdom. If we do the same we can’t go far wrong :o)

Anyway one of the objects was a bag of flour.
Plain flour!
What would you say about flour?!

Karen astounded me.
Flour is nothing on its own. It is not nutritious, or delicious or pleasant in any way (I have eaten some in the past!). It is plain. Useless.
But as an ingredient it becomes an invaluable component in bread, pastry, cakes, sauces, scones, biscuits, Yorkshire puddings… the list goes on!
We may come before God empty handed. Useless, we think; how could God possibly use us to further His kingdom? But when we surrender to Him we are willing ingredients. In doing so we will find God adding other things to our lives and before long God make a ‘cake’; something more than what we put in and bursting with the lightness of heaven and the flavours of God!

Whatever we have, surrender it to God and see what He can do. You’ll never be able to double guess Him; He’ll astound you every time!

When Jesus looked out and saw that a large crowd had arrived, he said to Philip, "Where can we buy bread to feed these people?" He said this to stretch Philip's faith. He already knew what he was going to do.
Philip answered, "Two hundred silver pieces wouldn't be enough to buy bread for each person to get a piece."
One of the disciples—it was Andrew, brother to Simon Peter—said, "There's a little boy here who has five barley loaves and two fish. But that's a drop in the bucket for a crowd like this."
Jesus said, "Make the people sit down." There was a nice carpet of green grass in this place. They sat down, about five thousand of them. Then Jesus took the bread and, having given thanks, gave it to those who were seated. He did the same with the fish. All ate as much as they wanted.
When the people had eaten their fill, he said to his disciples, "Gather the leftovers so nothing is wasted." They went to work and filled twelve large baskets with leftovers from the five barley loaves. John 6:5-13 (Msg)