Day 300; it feels like it has been a long run. Some evenings trying to scrape a meaning from a picture, some evenings perhaps going off on a tangent, but always trying to get something out. Forgive me if they were not quite biblically sound, although I try to make them so. And yet there are still many posts to do. I have to grab the chances whilst I can.

This picture nearly flew me by as I drove past the swing bridge at Moore Nature Reserve. I had to stop as the colours were just calling to be photographed. The camera is getting a bit old and battered but I stopped and jumped out and snapped a few pictures before returning to the journey to travel home with the family. A wonderful picture on an old battered camera. God’s gentle reminder that He is still here looking down upon us and urging us on.

We had been out for a walk on the Moore Nature Reserve. I used to play here as a child riding up and down enjoying the nature and wildness of the place. Moore Nature Reserve also runs at the side of the factory that used to make and store mustard gas. I thought that was a story us kids made up when we used to play here years ago, but after a quick search it proved true. It’s amazing what horrors lurk beneath such beautiful surroundings.

The trees and plant life seem to be covering up all these horrors very easily with but a few eerie pipes sticking up every now and then. Huge containers and pipes still lie beneath this moss, fungus and trees.

Jesus always seemed to be talking about how we needed to be clean on the inside rather than just the outside as he used to tell the Pharisees.

Matthew 23:25-27

25 “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you cleanse the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of extortion and self-indulgence. 26 Blind Pharisee, first cleanse the inside of the cup and dish, that the outside of them may be clean also.

27 “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs which indeed appear beautiful outwardly, but inside are full of dead men’s bones and all uncleanness.

Verse 27 rings true. Jesus convicts me daily, but also leads me forward with the solution. I just have to be strong enough to accept His open invitation. Even though I am unclean, He leads me forward and has already paid for these sins.

Britain has committed horrendous crimes in the name of war in the past, and there is still the odd case that seems to crop up, but we must have hope that on a whole our country seems to be acting for the greater good.

Who would think that at the end of this wonderful day of walking in nature I would be thinking about mustard gas. Its history is steeped in many victims and many sides in many conflicts seemed to have used it, perhaps first by the German Army in Ypres.

It seems strange in a year which I have visited the Flanders fields and seen the graves of the soldiers that gave their lives. How things seem to come full circle. The Germans in World war 1 used it and then Allied forces captured some supplies and used it, developed our own – some stocks were made and stored here at Moore, even until the 1960’s, but eventually we learned that if we fight with the sword then we will be slain with the sword. Even today there are parts of the world which are using mustard gas. You would think that there was no hope for the human race but to slaughter itself for years to come.

1 John 1:5-7

Fellowship with Him and One Another

5 This is the message which we have heard from Him and declare to you, that God is light and in Him is no darkness at all. 6 If we say that we have fellowship with Him, and walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. 7 But if we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanses us from all sin.

But there is hope. There is a solution. In the testimony of Jesus Christ; His Baptism, His sacrifice, the Spirit of resurrection. Could these also connect to verse 7? We must accept Jesus and be in fellowship, live a life devoted to loving everyone, even our enemies which we are told to pray for. Only by showing this love everyday can we say we are in fellowship with Christ.

Dear Lord, after a day of joy and of painful memories help us all to walk forward in fellowship with one another, not in anger but in love so that we may show Jesus to everyone we meet. Let us talk of the proof of Jesus Christ. Of his Baptism in water, of His sacrifice with His own blood, and of His glorious resurrection by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Amen