Salvogesis

                                Nimes – we found The Salvation Army right next to the Roman Arena and near the Temple to Augustus. I wish it was open when we went there. It would be great to see the kind of outreach that The Army does there. It did certainly strike me that the large cities we have seen in France, England, Scotland, Germany, Denmark, and Sweden do not have the same in-your-face homelessness and addiction that we have in Canada. I have my ideas why that is the case but we won’t go into that here today. Nimes is an ancient city. In Nimes we saw a temple dedicated to the sons of Caesar Augustus. Do we remember who he was in the Bible? Yes – he was the Roman Emperor when Jesus was born – ruler of Rome; Nimes, Gaul; Jerusalem, Judea; and many other places. We also read references to Herod who was responsible for Caesar’s navy. We know who that was? Herod the Great was ‘King of the Jews’ when Jesus...

                                    We walked around  Carcassone.  This is an amazing city in wine country. You can see the vineyards. It was beautiful. It was massive; It seemed impregnable. We also stopped in Saint Emilion, Bordeaux for lunch. It was a great lunch! There was wine sold everywhere in many of the shops. We obviously didn’t try any but we tried lots of great food. I believe I had shrimp here. I had lots of duck while we were visiting France. The exciting thing about Saint Emilion, Bordeaux, for me was the church there. Like many places it had been a pilgrimage stop. Like many places it had been attached by the revolutionaries during the French revolution – the French revolutionaries robbed, looted, destroyed, vandalized, attacked many churches. In this amazing church that was very old there were many remarkable things. One was a chair. We were all invited into the church an...

We visited La Rochelle on France. La Rochelle had a very nice harbour. We walked around the downtown. Their city hall was a castle in the middle of town – we thought about talking to Mayor Sharie Minions about maybe making something like that here! It would be great for tourism! La Rochelle: Do you know what the significance of La Rochelle is from a Canadian point-of-view? It the city from which Canada was founded! The Chamber of Commerce in La Rochelle funded the voyages of Cartier and Champlain. Cartier was the first person to map the St. Lawrence, including what would become Montreal and Quebec and he is the one who named Canada, Canada. We actually saw his house (from the outside) when we were in Saint-Malo in Brittany. It was neat because you could actually see Britain just across the water – I went swimming there – it was not swimming weather! But it was nice. Back to La Rochelle who funded Cartier and Champlain; we know who Champlain was? He established Quebec City in 1608, thre...

We spent a couple of weeks this May in France. I wrote to you here last week about some of the things the Lord taught me in Lourdes, France. Today I am going to chat about some of the things He showed me through some of the other places we visited. We visited a lot of places! One place we visited was Mont Saint-Michel. This was an amazing place to visit. This is a city on a tidal island in Normandy that for years and years, if you did not know your tides well, you took your life in your hands to visit; if the tides came in while you were walking out, you would be swept away to sea; they come in so fast and so powerfully!! The city fills the entire island. Walls are around the outside. The city then goes straight up a hill – door to door – small roads, no spaces between the buildings up to a giant church, an Abbey. Mont Saint-Michel was one of the few places to remain unconquered in the 100 Years War. Louis XI of France founded the  Order of Saint Michael  in1469 and he intende...

John 7:37-38: On the last and greatest day of the festival, Jesus stood and said in a loud voice, “Let anyone who is thirsty come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as Scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them.” We went to  Sanctuaire de Notre-Dame de Lourdes . They have healing water in a spring there under the church that you can walk right up to. The story of the healing spring and the cathedral goes a little like this: Bernadette Soubirous, a 14-year-old peasant girl, on 11 February 1858 saw a vision of Mary, the mother of Jesus and was told to go and drink water from a spring which was to appear inside the grotto and wash herself with it. She did and she kept going there and by mid-July had seen Mary 18 times. She was also told to tell the priests to build a chapel at the grotto site. They did. The Cathedral was built over the spring and people – like us - still visit today.  God is a God of miracles even today. There is a whole community...

Matthew 21:1-3: As they approached Jerusalem and came to Bethphage on the Mount of Olives, Jesus sent two disciples, saying to them, “Go to the village ahead of you, and at once you will find a donkey tied there, with her colt by her. Untie them and bring them to me. If anyone says anything to you, say that the Lord needs them, and he will send them right away.”   Jesus is making this journey for Passover. Passover is the greatest annual festival in Jerusalem. People come to the city from all over to experience it. It would be like Mardi Gras,  Carnival , May Day, Superbowl, the World Cup, or even the Olympics maybe – people are coming from all over to be a part of it – just to be there! There would be many, many people making this journey. Jesus and His followers are among them.   They come to Bethphage and the Mount of Olives which is Three kilometres from Jerusalem, about a 40 minute walk. It is the same distance from Bethphage to Jerusalem as we are here from Boomeran...

Do you ever get the idea that God is trying to tell you something? There might be something He is trying to teach me about Exodus 17:1-7. In a span of a couple of days, we read Exodus 17 in our family devotions, it was the text at a service we went to at the Gospel Hall, it showed up in my personal devotions, and was referenced in the lectionary when I was looking for texts to preach on the other week. With all of these hints I thought I should spend some time reflecting on this passage this week; so that is what we are doing today. And, if I had any lingering doubts this morning, 7 years ago today I saw in my Facebook memories that I congratulated a friend on preaching a great sermon on these exact verses!    The people are grumbling about God to Moses in Chapter 17 because they have nothing to drink. And In Chapter 16, they were grumbling about God to Moses because they had nothing to eat – Is God a waiter to bring them food and drink? Or is God the cook and Moses the wa...