I recently bought a book on body language….a subject that intrigues me, especially in my ministry as i love ‘people watching’. Now straight away those of you who meet me,as part of the church or circuit, may well become self conscious at the next time we meet. Don’t worry, i don’t look out for body language all the time ! But I’m told it can tell an awful lot about a person

Which was put to the test yesterday when i watched part of Tony Blair’s questioning at the Iraq inquiry. Just watch those hand movements go !!

which is why communication  by e-mail,Facebook,blogetc is so limiting….. you can’t see my reaction as i write this,nor can i see how you are responding to this ! Which is why, more and more, i think we need the ‘oil of grace’ poured in abundance in responding to e-mails etc. I compare it to how we used to (some still do !!) take time to compose a letter, take it to be posted and then wait for a reply….all of that taking time in which there was opportunity to withdraw the letter if we had second thoughts about something we had written. Pressing this ‘Send’ button is too easy and quick sometimes !

Grace….now there’s an ancient virtue which the Christian faith speaks allot about. And i can’t help thinking that it’s a good job God has it in abundance otherwise he might be pressing a few ’send’ buttons very quickly when we get things wrong !   But i also can’t help pondering what body language God has in response to all that we do….any suggestions ??

So how was it for you ? I hope you had a good Christmas and New Year…the reality now hits as people return to work and school; the decorations go down and the sweets and chocolate that either we were given or we bought don’t seem to be as attractive now !

And then i hear a debate on television as to whether we are to call this year two thousand and ten or twenty ten….. some news programmes have too much time to fill !

My own reflection is that New Year’s always come with a certain amount of optimism. It’s like that feeling you had at school when you were given a new exercise book to do your work in… clean sheets of paper with enormous potential.  And the book had to be written in page by page and woe betide you if you skipped or wasted a page ! Each new day of this new year is unique…there will never be another Tuesday 5th January 2010…or whatever the date is when you read this ! It comes with a clean sheet of paper regardless of what happened yesterday or what will happen tomorrow….yours as a gift from God. As an old saying goes:

yesterday is history; tommorrow is mystery; today is a gift…that’s why it is called the present

Have a good day…have a God day !