Dear
Friends,
“I’m a crack pot and
that’s OK”
We’ve
had a wonderful weekend with Martin and Cesca Cavender and Greg Leavers (20 –
22 Jan) and want to thank them and everyone else who prayed and worked for this
special Church Weekend at Home.
We
have so much to be grateful for, as Psalm 126 verse 3 says:
The
LORD has done great things for us,
and
we are filled with joy.
Over
the weekend, I shared a verse from the New Testament, where the Apostle
Paul writing in 2 Corinthians 4:7 said: “But we have this treasure [the light of the
knowledge of God’s glory displayed in the face of Christ] in jars of clay to
show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us.”
It
came to mind because a friend of mine had written in an e-mail earlier in the
week: “How wonderful that the blessed
Trinity delights to take fallen, broken, indeed stupid folks like us...and use
us, not in spite of our brokenness, but precisely as we are broken. What
a marvel. The Lord can strike a straight line with a broken stick.”
That
sentence The Lord can strike a straight
line with a broken stick captured my imagination.
Michele
and I along with our three children worked in Paraguay or 5 years (1989-1994)
and know a former Bishop of Argentina, David Leake. David, was born of
missionary parents in the Argentine Chaco. His parents Alfred and Dorothy went
to Argentina in the early 1950’s. They worked among the indigenous people
particularly the Toba people. David’s first language was Toba before he learned
his own mother tongue!
Alfred
and Dorothy were quintessentially English - and each afternoon, there in the
bush, they would have afternoon tea using their china tea pot and china cups
and saucers. One day Dorothy noticed that one of the saucers was cracked – so
she threw it into one of the rubbish holes which the Toba used to bury their
garbage.
David
grew up, went back to the UK to school, University and then felt a call to
ordained ministry; was ordained into the Anglican church, served a ‘curacy’
(trainee assistant pastor) and then felt the Lord calling him to missionary
service in South America. He eventually became Bishop of Northern Argentina and
then Bishop of Argentina.
Whilst
he was Bishop of Northern Argentina, one day he was visiting one of the Toba
settlements, and because the Bishop was coming the Toba people went off to
prepare for a celebration of Holy Communion.
When
+David came to the prepared place, he noticed on the ‘holy’ table a cup holding
the wine, but the vessel holding the bread was none other than the cracked
saucer which his mother had thrown away some forty years prior. What was once
considered useless was now holding the Bread of Life!
Isn’t
it great being a ‘crack pot’?
John
