Bulgaria baby...

Just back from a week of snow-boarding in Bulgaria. I was away with 115 other people from Waringstown Presby so I'm pretty sure that makes it a working holiday - yeah right!!! Anyways, it was a great trip. We were staying in Pamparovo and managed to arrive during the best snow of their season and so had a great week on and off the slopes! This was my third full week of snow boarding in the last few years so I'm definitely getting the hang of it. My mate Dave was there too (same level of boarding as me) and we went to try and get some 'intermediate' lessons to improve our technique but the instructor told us we were 'advanced'! Both of us laughed about this a lot cos i don't think he would have called us advanced if he had seen how much time we spent on our butts!

It was great going away with so many people because no matter where you went there was people from our group and the banter was excellent in the evenings. It was also a great trip for me to get to know a few more people from the church. It's scary to think that at the end of this month i will have been at WPC for a year.

I had to do a morning devotion whilst away and so focused on a verse i have been thinking about recently from John 20. I've been thinking about this ever since Pete Greig highlighted this verse at the Nua conference i was at recently. The context is the resurrection of Jesus. Mary Magdalene has found the tomb empty and is understandably upset and then she has a conversation with what she thinks is the gardener but is actually Jesus. What we read here are Jesus' first words of the new covenant to humanity and they are 'why are you crying?'. This amazes me as it speaks several things to me about who God is:

1. God is a God of COMPASSION - He cares deeply about our hurt, pain and sorrow. 'Why are you crying?'
2. God is a God who UNDERSTANDS - He identifies with our pain in that He suffered and died in his humanity. 'Why are you crying?'
3. God is a God who LISTENS - Jesus listens to Mary's pain and hurt, even though he knows exactly why she is crying, he still asks 'why are you crying?' and he listens.

In our pain, hurt and sorrow, we can run a to a God of compassion, who understands and listens and ultimately we will find COMFORT.