All over the world...

...this gospel is bearing fruit and growing, just as it has been doing among you since the day you heard it and understood God's grace in all its truth. Colossians 1:6.

This is something I have been both spurred on (I remain allergic to the word "encourage") and joyfully reassured by. All over the world the gospel is proving to be true. And how true has that been just in the past few days here in Berlin!! And it is not only a message that saves, it also transforms, and the truth of that is beginning to hit home in new ways over the past few weeks.

I had ants in my room everywhere, in my cereal, in my plate cupboard, in my food. I have a leaking tap and no shower curtain. But I have a God who provides practically, I have a team who is prepared to give up their morning while I am at school to put up curtains in my room, to clean my minging loo and to put down all sorts of ant prevention methods.

I have the chance to go to the SMD version of Forum - where loads of Christian students get together for a few days to prepare for the year ahead in their universities - when normally I´d be at work in school. Somehow (hmm, somehow?!) the dates have come together so that the school is having its 100th birthday celebrations that week which means no lessons and just optional attendance for me - I will go for the first couple of days and arrive at the Leitertage late. When I thought I wasn´t going at all, this is great news.

There has been a great deal of laughter and joy in the team, for which I am really thankful. It is easy at some points to switch off from all the German I´m hearing and just dwell - dwell on people, things, comforts, basically on anything that´s not immdeitaely accessible. But if the gospel is to grow in me so much that it bears fruit somehow this growth has to replace something else. It´s all about being filled with Christ not just putting off the things that drag us down. So being filled with Christ means not going back again and again to conversations, events, moments, whether happy or sad.

Today I went to an exhibition about Babylon. It was on at the Berlin version of the British Museum and was fascinating - both informative and also really interesting to see how all the visitors were made to think that what they were seeing was really "objective" truth. Whenever the biblical ideas about Babylon were discussed the rooms were either painted red or black, and there were out-of-context verses on the walls. But nevertheless there was nothing innately wrong with what was being described, it was simply missing the why, and that is a big hole to fill.

Yesterday four boys in one of my classes hid in a tent for 25 minutes at the back of the classroom. It put me in an awkward position as I didn´t know whether to tell the teacher or pretend she had already noticed (which she hadn´t). I went for the latter, and was vindicated because she covered it up quite well. It was pretty funny though.

I am getting used to being anonymous in a big city. It certainly has its advantages. There is no danger of bumping into anyone again if you do something ridiculous. There is time to think. It also gives a strange satisfaction in being seen to have friends (albeit limited numbers at the moment) ... when everyone is so absorbed in their own world on any form of public transport it is seen as unusual to have a chat with anyone, let alone one that seems to be more than superficial.

And more and more I am realising that "we are more than conquerors through him who loved us."
For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor loneliness, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor armies of ants nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord."
Romans 8: 37ff