Reading and the world!

I have just been asked whether I see maps as either Reading or Not Reading. This may be because I love this town to which me and B have been called, and it can come across that I see this town as the centre of the whole universe. I love its diversity, I love its life, I love the fact that i can walk down the road and hear so many different languages.

However the world is bigger than Reading! Even this morning at our elders meeting, we spoke of Amsterdam, St Petersburgh and Harare (well Zim in general). Ed is moving to Washington, North Carolina and Tom is currently writing about hotels in Spain (Tom works out of the church office one day a week for a travel company as a journalist/reviewer.) New Zealand are playing England at cricket and Djokovic (from Serbia) has surprisingly just been knocked out of Wimbledon.

60 years ago people would rarely venture from their home town, today, your home town is the town where you settle. Paul Young sang 'Wherever I lay my hat, that's my home.'

I think the apostle Paul had a similar mentality. He saw his home as Heaven and that he was just a soujourner here. He went from place to place sharing the gospel, planting churches, crossing cultural barriers and telling all who would listen about the good news of Jesus. I want to be like Paul - not in going to many towns and cities, but in seeing my home as heaven - not Reading. I want to be spurred on by his incessant desire to see the gospel proclaimed to the ends of the earth, through people being sent from this church, and people coming to this church from other nations for a time, then being planted back into their native lands.