Yesterday I was in a familiar church setting but one quite different in some ways to what I have experienced over the last few weeks. The wooden pews, the pipe organ, the long sermons (45 and 55 minutes I think), Grace hymn book, Thee and Thou praying, a man in a proper pulpit wearing a tie, etc. Actually all those are incidentals and not quite the big deal sometimes made of them and the great thing was being given every encouragement to worship God together. My father-in-law, Geoff Thomas, preached a very convincing sermon on the goodness of God in the morning (from the story of the rich young ruler a la Walter Chantry) and was fine in the evening with a four point sermon from Romans 4:1-5. Both sermons had real bite. I was also helped by the prayers. In the afternoon we had a lovely tea downstairs to mark the golden wedding anniversary of my parents-in-law.
