If you’ve ever visited a stately home or a historic building somewhere in the world, no doubt you have come across one of those rooms that are filled with enormous paintings, exotic decor and brilliantly painted ceilings. I’ve

marvelled many a time at the intricacy of painted ceilings and wondered how many people, and how long to complete the picture. I’ve also looked at this country’s great cathedrals and reflected on generations of a family who lived

and died in the shadow of the building, gradually creating this massive structure over their whole lives.

The individuals who did these jobs patiently completed small sections, day by day, knowing that at the end the whole picture would be seen as the designer intended. I don’t imagine that they focussed very often on the

whole task, the entire length of the ceiling or the plan of the cathedral. And yet in our individual lives we often focus on seeing the finished article, the pot made by the potter: painted, glazed and fired. As Marilyn reminded us

recently, as the clay in Jesus’ hands, how prepared are we to be moulded, refined and shaped into the object He is making?

The bible tells us to persevere; Jesus uses examples of persistent people to illustrate the importance of asking God for things in the knowledge that they will be provided, but not always in our preferred timescales. “Ask and it will

be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you”. In personal life, and in the life of our fellowship, we find ourselves on a journey that requires perseverance, trusting that the picture is complete in

God’s eyes; the pot finished in its glory. It does mean that we pass through difficult times, sometimes we need a breakthrough to get out, and sometimes we just come out the other side. Whatever it is, and however the long the

period, God’s promise is that He is travelling that journey with us.

I recently wrote the Charity Commission report on the Church’s activities in 2008, and it brought me to a place of reflection over the last 2 years on the journey we’d made together. It’s certainly been a journey, and one I think

and hope we’ve made together as a fellowship. We’ve pushed different doors, some of them we’ve left alone, and I do believe we’ve persevered at living out the Gospel in this community, and we’ll carry on. 2 years ago we

didn’t know what we’d be like now, and we don’t know what we’ll be like in another 2 years, but what we can be confident in is that we “run with perseverance the race marked out for us. Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith….” If our eyes are fixed on Jesus, we won’t look at the distance we’ve got to go, or the speed we making, we’re only be looking at where we’re heading, and all He sees is the finished article.

Piers