Cambridge

One of the great things about living in Cambridge is that I often feel very small. Almost everybody I meet is cleverer or more dilligent than me. Just the other week I had lunch in the Materials Science Dept. of the University with Dr Kawasaki, a Japanese friend who comes to our church. He is studying/developing carbon nano-chip technology and new tpes of computer memory, using, among other things, a big furnace that employs infra-red waves to heat substances to 1000 degrees inside 10 seconds (how cool is that!?)

When I work out how to stick pictures on this blog I will show you the diagrams he drew for me on a scrap paper as he graciously tried to explain to me what he was up to. The wow factor is big here. And my wonder increases every week at the God who gave us such tools (as the organisation and transmission of knowledge and technology) in order that we might understand, fill and subdue this fabulous earth he has made for us.

And how exciting it is for us at Rock that so many from overseas, particularly Japan, come to be part of our community as we seek to worship God and witness to them of His love. I pray that God would graciously extend his mercy to all those who visit the church who are not yet believers in Jesus, so that we might rejoice all the more at His great salvation.

baroque and divine goodness

The following evening, our church, Rock Baptist, hosted an evening musical event at the Round Church (second oldest building in Cambridge). David Rowland, an elder at the church, Professor of Music at the Open University, Director of Music at Christ's College, Cambridge, and thoroughly decent bloke gave a short concert on his haprsichord and was interviewed about music and faith.

The music was almost enough to get me to like the harpsichord, and his answers were thought-provoking, and I hope, valuable to the many visitors who came. He spoke of music as a tremendous gift from God, and also talked about our use of that gift in the context of God's greatest gift, his Son, Jesus Christ. Soli deo gloria!

eke and mild

What a strange November this is. Are there any other cyclists out there who are getting as sticky now as you were in August!?

And what a sky there was to the east of Cambridge last night. Kate, who tends to notice her surroundings a little more than I do (lost as I often am in frowning and looking at puddles), drew my gaze upwards. The heavens well and truly declared the glory of God. And the more we looked into the deep blue, the more the stars rushed to the surface.

And what is man, that you are mindful of him, the son of man, that you care for him? (Psalm 8) That we can appreciate such beauty as there is in nature (let alone in culture), drink it in, revel in it, and feel the need to communicate the joy and the experience to the person next to us, is one of the strongest arguments in favour of beneficent theism. We are so utterly dependent on what is outside us, so fragile, and yet so able to enjoy it all, to shape it and value it... How can we not recognise that man is not the measure of all things, that instead God has put eternity in our hearts, so that we might seek after Him, the source of all these good gifts.