Tuesday 14th June 2011 - Cycling and Reading in the sun.

Lovely weather today, and I set out cycling from home joining Route 4 in St Christopher Drive, taking it through Caerphilly, Bedwas, Trethomas to Machen and then Draethen. A lovely village to stop at in the sun and read for half an hour, before pressing on (and up… and up!) to Rudry where I had lunch and read some more. Then a fast run from the Rudry mountain viewpoint down Van Road and back to Caerphilly where I sat looking out over the castle and read some more for an hour or so.
I’m still on John James’s book, Dry Bones Can Live, and I’m very much enjoying it. He made a couple of comments about miracles which I found helpful. John James is one who sees signs and wonders as important, but he notes that miracles are not as common today in the UK church as they are in some other parts of the world. (Miracles do still occur here, as well as answers to prayer, of course, he comments). This goes with what I was thinking about last week concerning the way signs and wonders tend to happen more in pioneer evangelistic situations, and maybe they are less for the complacent, comfortable church.
Secondly, we see the fulfilment today of Jesus’ remarks in John 14 about ‘greater things than these’ in the miraculous nature of modern medicine. Far more healing miracles occur every day now than during Jesus’ earthly ministry – things we accept as coming from science, but which the people of Jesus’ day would have seen as just as miraculous as the healings he performed.