A new (long-time coming!) postcard.

A walk in the park with friends and time spent chatting on the shore enjoying the beauty of God’s good earth.

Conversations had, being with people, listening to their hearts… feels good.

I imagine the time the disciples spent with Jesus was like these times. Strolling from village to village, eating snacks on the way. Pausing to take in the view. There was the usual questions that the disciples asked and the neat way Jesus answered. I imagine that one by one Jesus spent so much time with each of the twelve.

Encouraging Judas Iscariot away from armed insurrection, listening to Peter’s wild schemes and planting seeds of adventure in all of them. Men who had never been out of Israel and yet they changed the world. Jesus had called them to be fishers of men and had walked them up and down the length of the land and into territories they never imagined going: Samaria were the heretics lived, Syro-Phonecia where the Lebanese were very cosmopolitan influenced by Athens and Rome and the Gaderenes where the locals had so sold out to Rome that they were raising pigs for them.

In these walks and time together a man called Thomas had planted in him a desire to go further than most. History tells us he travelled, planted churches and established the faithful in what we now know as India. He was martyred in a suburb of modern day Chennai in 72AD, run through with lances.

We think little of travelling those miles these days, Angie and I are flying to Chennai in a few days time, but for Thomas it must have been a difficult trek although he might have travelled part way by boat as the Romans came to Chennai to trade in spices.

I think it’s fitting that I started this post with a sketch of a boat; constantly on our travels I’m reminded of the Celtic saints who like St. Brendan set sail from the island of Ireland to take the gospel to the ends of the earth:- peregrinatio pro Christo. To travel, pilgrimage for Christ, a phrase used by church fathers and by Augustine of Hippo especially in his book “City of God”. According to Augustine peregrinatio was the normal state the church was to be in.

Some of those saints, it is said, cast off in small boats from their communities, set sail and promptly threw the rudder overboard, choosing to be blown where the Holy Spirit would take them… just sayin’!