An update

The trip back from Aber last Friday was long but uneventful. I came via Newport but just didn't have time to visit my dad. On reflection, I should have been up at 6 am not 7 am. There we are. It was imperative that I got back to London in good time as I had agreed to take the funeral of a lady (Betty Plant) who I knew from the BUPA care home I visit fortnightly. The funeral was at the Marylebone Crematorium in Finchley. There were only a handful of mourners. We wisely chose not to sing. There was a brief tribute by her grandson and a poem then I spoke briefly from Romans 6:23. Refreshments were served back at the grandson's home. One funny things was that I had heard recently that she had been to Lourdes, which made me concerned about whether she would really have wanted the sort of funeral I would do. Anyway, it turned out she was a cricket fan and the trip had been to Lord's! These occasions are not easy and I don't do them often but I feel one can just gently scatter the seed and hope for something. We had the clubs in the evening. Somehow I'd found time to prepare an Autumn quiz. Saturday was mostly taken up with preparations. However, in the morning four us headed up to Golders Green to give out a tract I'd prepared. It was called The power of God for salvation. One man tried to be clever and said he had his own power. As I pointed out that will soon run out though. In the evening we had the older young people around and I spoke from the call to remember your Creator in the days of your youth towards the end of Ecclesiastes. To make things interesting I put up some appropriate little posters, played some music (death by Ravi Shankar, young gifted and black, if I had a little time, etc) and had quizzes on age related diseases and guessing people's ages (I must replicate the latter quiz some time). Sunday was a good day as we carried on with Mark 11 and Romans 1. I had to spend a lot of time preparing in the afternoon a it has been such a busy week. The days following haven't been much less busy. On Monday there were lots of Jews about marking Yom Kippur. I was at LTS for the TSG, looking at Calvin's sermons on Acts (I only had time to read some of these beforehand but it was still worthwhile being present with the other 6 or 7 present led by Jeremy Walker. On Tuesday it was the committee for organising the next Grace Assembly, preceded by a trip to Brent Cross with my wonderful wife for a cuppa in the Krispy Kreme joint there. David Last will chair next May and Gerard Hemmings will be among the speakers. Watch this space. Then to round off Wednesday was another busy day with a trip up to the new library location in Bounds Green to help out with manning the place while the stuff that has been in storage was unloaded. Ian Densham did the lion's share as ever. In the evening we had a good turn out for the midweek meeting looking at Deuteronomy 32 and praying for GBM, etc.

Acts 17:11 B R Haydon

On page 95 of one of these books of anecdotes (on Acts 17:11) I read this from the pen of Benjamin Robert Haydon (1786-1846).

Wikipedia says about him that

Readers of his autobiography were struck by the frequency and fervour of the short prayers interspersed throughout the work. Haydon had an overwhelming sense of a personal, overruling and merciful providence, which influenced his relations with his family, and to some extent with the world. He had many enemies, actuated by motives as unworthy as his own were always high-pitched and on abstract grounds laudable.
Of his three great works — Solomon, Entry into Jerusalem and Lazarus — the second is generally regarded as the finest. Solomon shows his executive power at its loftiest, and is of itself enough to place Haydon at the head of British historical painting in his own time. Lazarus is a more unequal performance, and in various respects open to criticism; yet the head of Lazarus is so majestic and impressive that, if its author had done nothing else, we must still pronounce him a potent pictorial genius.

BENJAMIN ROBERT HAYDON'S ADVICE TO HIS SON ON READING THE BIBLE DAILY.—The famous English painter, Benjamin Robert Haydon, wrote this excellent advice to his son, at a very critical time in the boy's life :—" Read your Bible daily. There is no more interesting book in the world, and it is becoming more necessary to read it and study it, because I already perceive a tendency among our scientific men, in all their pride of knowledge and what they call discovery, to set the Bible aside as an Oriental legend. Do not believe them. The Mosaic account of the Creation is the most simple and the most natural, and will be found, you may rely on it, confirmed by science, when science has got down to the real facts. Generalisation, founded on our present knowledge of the laws of nature,is the very thing which our present acquaintance with these laws does not justify. I am convinced no thoroughly established and settled scientific theory will be found to contradcict the truths revealed in the Bible. But you are too young yet for me to enter further upon this subject. I only tell you you of it to oput you on your guard. You will find many men, old and grown-up men, who will laugh at the Bible. Don't believe them. Mathematics are all very well ; but the differential calculus, my dear boy, can never prove or disprove the existence of God. Read your Bible, do your duty, and leave the rest to God. Ever your affectionate father, BENJAMIN HAYDON.