September 3rd 2006: Windswept

I've just returned from an uplifting service. The music and worship were excellent. My daughter Rebekah was on the drums, my daughter Hannah singing, hands uplifted and everyone in the flow of worship. The theme of the service was 'Create in me a pure heart' and I was left thinking a couple of things.

Firstly, that purity does not come from keeping external rules and focussing on righteousness like a new Pharisee. That way we can never attain the true purity that comes from God. Jesus made that clear.

Secondly, purity comes from God as we open our hearts to God's love. It is in the flow of love and kindness that we will know and encounter the purity of God. It is not the outside things that pollute us, but what flows from inside us, from our hearts. Conversely, it is the flow of God's love that purifies us.

On the bike ride home, I felt joyful. It was a sunny, cloudy, windswept morning. The wind was boisterous, chasing white fluffy clouds across the sky, then sloshing buckets of sunlight over me - and blowing right through me all the way home.

I felt happy and open to what felt like buckets of God's love being sloshed all over me as well. May we find holiness - not by seeming more righteous than other people, but by the grace God gives us to show love to others and just get on with things.

I'm home now. Outside the wind is knocking at the windows. Perhaps I'll open all the windows in the house and let the wind pour through it. Letting in all the sunlight too. Like the Holy Spirit, bright and joyful and full of love. The constant flow of love that comes from God.

'Create in me a pure heart, O Lord

And renew a right spirit within me!'

Blow wind, blow!