Easter, ANZAC day and the Royal Wedding

So, I’m back from two weeks leave, a little disappointed that it’s over (obviously!) and also that in the end I didn’t actually spend much time at home doing home things (I think I am going to have to try again on that at some point - the last two times I’ve tried my Mum has ended up coming to visit, which, while nice, is just not the same thing as being able to stay home and read books and potter about). After Mum left I went to Canberra for most of a week and caught up with friends, family, old flatmates and old military connections (not that I was ever in the military, but was involved in ministry to the military for a time).

Easter itself was good. I took Mum to my church here on Good Friday evening and it was a beautiful communion service, with candles burning, acoustic music, the bible story from Luke read in excerpts, and a great and very encouraging message from Paul Dale (that I don’t think is online). There was something I found very suitably sober yet hopeful about the whole thing. Then Easter Sunday I heard a friend Dave Irving preach at Crossroads at ANU in Canberra on the Emmaus Road passage and the journey from disappointment to hope, which was also great and very encouraging.

While down there I also went to the dawn ANZAC service at the War Memorial, with 27,999 other people, which was quite something, except that it was so overcast the whole thing happened in the dark and we didn’t actually see anything, including the dawn! After that we went to breakfast with a naval officer I used to co-lead a bible study here in Sydney with, and his family, and it was still only about 6:30 am in the morning. That was a looong day. And of course, I also went to a Royal Wedding Party, with Pimms and cucumber sandwiches and a tiara on my head, for fun (and millions of people heard Thomas Cranmer’s wedding service and Romans 12 read, which is not to be scoffed at).

So, that was it for occasions and events.