I was invited to deliver the talk at Rockmass VII at Thatcham last night and it was a FABULOUS evening. I don't mean my talk necessarily - I was pleased with how the sketch and the visual display went but I'll leave others to let you know how the tlk went down! - but the whole evening was really cool. For me a particular high was seeing Emma (one of the young people who came with us to Taize two years ago) singing in the band and ROCKING - she was AWESOME! There were some great tunes including One Love (not Blue but Bob Marley) and some great Stuart Townend and Matt Redman. It was also really cool to catch up with Pete and Sue who I haven't seen in ages and meet Ray, a new (ish) youthworker from the diocese. He said "oh yes I think I've seen your name on Ian's blog" - infamy!
This would usually be the point at which I cut and paste the talk that I gave last night but... trouble is... I worked out the basic idea and theme of what I was going to say last night but I never wrote it down and simply spoke without notes last night.
I was talking about John 10.10-10 and I did use an image which I will share with you which I heard SO long ago that I forget where (and indeed forgot the original concepts!)
I took a large glass vase to symbolise life
and placed some large pebbles in it to symbolise the big things in life like family work food etc and asked people, "is it full" (fortunately I got a few yeses!)
Then I toped it up with gravel which trickled through the pebbles and up to the top to represent the fun stuff in life like friends and sport and music "full?" the response was mixed
Then I took a big jug of sand to represent the little kindnesses and good intentions, the things we tend to squeeze in when we can and thesound of the sand was pretty cool as it slid effortlessthrough the pebbles and gravel - "full?" by this point some people had cottoned on and were saying "No?"
Then I finally took a jug of water and talked about Jesus and the living water. I talked about how we can fill our lives with all kinds of things; things that matter and things that don't and yet no matter how much we fill our lives there is ALWAYS room for the living water. Then I poured the water in and it bubbled and gurgled (fab stuff!)
My message was: You may be living it large but unless you have God in your life, your not living life in all its fullness.
There was a man taking photos so if I get any I'll post them up.
Was anybody there? Any feedback people?
2 comments:
I used the same illustration about a year ago, and at the end I asked what the young people thought the moral was. A quick witted parent chipped in with "no matter how full your life is, there's always room for a pint".
Rich
Well we enjoyed it, and the young people we brought along said it was great, and back up to the usual standard (general opinion of the last Rockmass was that it wasn't quite as good).
We liked the talk, and I suspect there may be a visual aid with a jar, some rocks, gravel, sand and water turning up sometime soon at St James!
The other thing that was good was that Rev Tom seemed a lot more relaxed celebrating than he did last time, and handled the odd technical hiccups with good humour.
Definitely looking forward to Rockmass VIII in the autumn.
Post a Comment