This morning was the most daunting task that I have had to carry out since being ordained and being at the cathedral. We have recently started a Family Eucharist, which is an all age service in the cathedral. Today I spoke at the Family Eucharist and I think I was the most nervous I have been for quite a while.

For the last however many years I have avoided the talk/sermon at family services of any kind. Even when I was on the staff of Holy Trinity Nailsea I avoided this as Sarah is so much better – and still is.

My curacy at the cathedral meant that today was the day to break new ground. My first ever family service talk. I started the talk by playing a few games such as ‘I Spy’, ‘Numberplates’ and ‘Animal Alphabet’ and I was quite excited to hear people calling out names of animals as we went through the alphabet. We got stuck on the letter x but there seems to be quite a few here – none of which I have ever heard – such as the xenopus pictured!

My aim through these was to introduce the idea of journey as these games are typical of those played in cars with children on journeys – and today we were looking at Saul’s journey to Damascus and meeting Jesus on the road.

The interesting thing for me in the preparation for this talk is where Jesus chooses to meet with Saul. It is on the road where the action is – not at the destination, not during a camp set up for the night, not even during a lunch break … but God chooses to meet with Saul while Saul is on a normal everyday journey as part of his normal everyday work.

As I dwelled on that, I then started to wonder whether I have actually ever missed God on my everyday travels through being plugged into my ipod, reading my book (not whilst driving!) or just because I have been too intent on the task being finished or the destination being reached. It’s an interesting thought.

Could it be that God is trying to break through a lot of the time, maybe not as majorly and unavoidably as he does with Saul in today’s text – but still in an unmistakingly unique way that tells us it is God? I wonder …

(if you want to read the whole talk (all one and a bit sides of A4!) it will be on the cathedral website with all the other sermons here.