Send to Joppa

So I have this thing about weaving God stories into the everyday. And I can't think precisely why we've been looking at Cornelius and Peter's encounter in Acts 10 this weekend, although it might have been about subconsciously trying to prepare Miriam a bit for her visit to a Muslim neighbour's house, just in case anything came up about food stuff. But I think God wanted us to look at that story at this time for a few other reasons too.

Anyways, it started, as a lot of these things do, with me still lying in bed, and we just used the amazingly bright light of the morning to get them into thinking about what radiant means and why the vision of an angel might have got Cornelius all terrified. And over breakfast we just made do with whatever was lying around. Which in our case means rather a few too many miniature animals. So when it got to the bit about Peter's vision (in our version, he was on top of a flat roof tissue box house on the Joppa side of the kitchen table, with Wendy from Bob the Builder starring as Simon the Tanner's wife, cooking up a lamb tagine down below, delicious smells wafting upwards, God saying so he's hungry, hmmm, maybe I can use that natural thing to help trigger something supernatural) they descended on their sheet three times, and we sorted out stuff that Peter thought he could eat from what he couldn't. And we checked out Deuteronomy 14 to check out why. And wondered how a bat made it onto the list of birds. And I remembered the bit where, as a new Christian, I found the straightlaced footnote about the coney (that is, the hyrax, or rock badger) so funny. I guess you wouldn't want to be there when the laughter stops.

And lots came out of discussing the story with Miriam and Theo. About everyone having a chance to be included in God's family now, and how God moves things on and does stuff in a new way to reach people who are looking for him. And when it gets to the end and Peter says about Cornelius and his household, Well, they've been filled with the Holy Spirit so what's to stop them being baptised? Miriam wondered why she hadn't been baptised yet, and from most of what we asked her, she seemed good and ready, so where do we take that next?

Peter fairly exploded with his good news: "It's God's own truth, nothing could be plainer: God plays no favorites! It makes no difference who you are or where you're from—if you want God and are ready to do as he says, the door is open. The Message he sent to the children of Israel—that through Jesus Christ everything is being put together again—well, he's doing it everywhere, among everyone. [Acts 10:34-36, The Message]

But here's what I think is particularly cool about the timing of our looking at this story where timing (Peter has his vision just in time for the arrival of the men that Cornelius has sent. Meanwhile...) was so crucial.

Our good buds from Manchester, Kev and Emily, were flying back from Israel this weekend. We live pretty close to the M1, which is a decent way of getting north from Luton airport, so they dropped round for a good chunk of Sunday.  We got to talk about and see photos of some of what they'd experienced there during the past two weeks. Which included some nice pictures of Joppa (now called Jaffa), which they'd strolled to one evening from Tel Aviv. So, Miriam and Theo, here are two dudes who walked to Joppa, just like in the story...

And, we saw some snapshots of the wildlife too. Big ole catfish in the Jordan River. Terrapins with mud on their shells. And nestled among the stones, just sitting there, scratching itself and looking like a guinea pig on steroids: a coney.  

Or hyrax. 

Or rock badger.