A feast for sore eyes?

22 Aug 2004

Unusual expression though the title of this post may seem (“A feast for sore eyes”), it does make quite a lot of sense once thought about.  It is the amalgamation of the phrases “A sight for sore eyes” and “Feast your eyes on this” — the result of an attempted application of Australian/English-speaking colloquialisms by a foreigner.

Well, okay, not exactly a foreigner.  An ex-pat of Australia… not even that!  An Australian citizen whose work requires time spent away from this country in a semi-permanent setting.  Yes.  Something like that.  Anyway, this man has been living in France for the past while (thirteen years? fourteen? I honestly can’t recall what he said…), working as a missionary there.

Whoa, hang on, Josh… Australia Christians are sending missionaries to France?  But… isn’t France a country with Christian origins and stuff?  Well… sort of.  That doesn’t necessarily result in a significant number of people actually following Jesus, though.  Much of France is either “culturally” religious (that is, they follow traditions without actually believing [in] the God or entity behind this), atheist, or Muslim.

Laws regarding separation of Church and State in France establish religion as a “private” thing, not to be shared (and certainly not taught) in the public sphere.  That said, the Government in France is very supportive of the beliefs of the individual, which means that people (of any faith) cannot be persecuted for this.

So why, then, does our Church send people to France, if people are free to believe what they want?  Surely, there are plenty of Christians in France if they can believe whatever they want?

Well, these missionaries are living and working in a city called Toulouse, which has three universities, and approximately 100,000 students.  Toulouse is one of FOUR university cities in this region of France, and Owen Chadwick (the missionary) is the only staff-worker working with students in this area.  So, one to a few hundred thousand students kind of ratio.

Yeah.  So, this guy was speaking at my church (ESM) this evening, on a passage from a book in the New Testament called Ephesians.  It was kind of odd, because this is the sort of passage which I’d normally glance at and then skip past… it looks fairly generic and boring.

http://www.biblegateway.com/cgi-bin/bible?language=english&passage=Eph+1%3A15-23&version=NIV is a link to the passage for anyone interested (Ephesians 1:15-23); it is a very exciting prayer, but I’d managed to completely miss this until it was presented tonight.

So what’s so exciting about it?  It’s asking for “the Spirit of wisdom and revelation” — okay, so that means something has to be there to be revealed, that we don’t know about or aren’t aware of, right?  The speaker likened us to being in a blackout, moving to the walls and feeling they were smooth.  Hang on, we’re in a crumbly sandstone building!  That’s not right!  And if the walls were made from gold ingots, we wouldn’t know — it’s the same with Christians if God doesn’t reveal his riches to us.

And THAT is a good thing because…?  What’s there that is so good, so worth knowing about?  Back towards the start of Ephesians (Ephesians 1:3), the writer of this letter, Paul, says “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ.”

EVERY blessing.  So it’s not like a stack of gold piled around the walls.  It’s much, much bigger.  It’ll probably stay shiny for longer, too.