Whatever happened to the Jebusites?

Well, four weeks of term are over - half-way through Michaelmas term, Advent will be here before I know it! Am I up to date with all my reading? Do I know all the Greek vocab I'm so supposed to have learnt? Do I know what I'm actually doing? Think I can safely say NO to all these questions! But, as I said last week, Rome wasn't built in a day, so there is hope yet!

So what snippet of wisdom (well random pondering) can I impart this week... Well, "the future is bright - not because it's Orange but because it belongs to God" (David Peel, Encountering Church, 2006). This has to be the best line of text I've read this week (possibly this term!). From the depths of the pile books and texts that I have had to read this week has popped this one line, which maybe, just maybe, has been a glimmer of light. I might be despairing over the 1500 words I need to write about Wycliffe and his reforms or completely bamboozled by what we've covered in the last two weeks in Theology, but actually it's ok, because the future is bright and belongs to God! This doesn't mean I can ignore everything, but it does put it all in to a bit more perspective. Though it is important that I learn about church history, Christian theology and the Old and New Testaments; I am here to train to be a minister of the church.

In preaching this week we were discussing how any sermon that we prepare/preach needs to be relevant to those sat in the pews (or chairs). How many people come to church on Sunday with the burning desire to find out about what happened to the Jebusites? Very few, me thinks! This doesn't mean I don't need to have some clue on how to answer this question, but what I learn here over the next 3 years I need to use to make things relevant - meet the people where they're at and not give them a lecture on something which if we were being honest we don't really care about.

So David Peel, to coin a line from Fischy "You are an Inspiration"!

P.S. For those that are vaguly interested the Jebusites were a Cannanite tribe that built and inhabited Jerusalem before David conquered it. What happened to them? Actually don't have the foggiest, I need to do some reading, though maybe not this week!