DERELICTION AFTER A GREAT SERVICE

As we are now without a Minister at our Church, until we find a new one, we will be having visiting preachers each week and today our speaker was Jide Fawunmi, a Team Pastor from Romford Baptist Church.  It was an excellent service and Jide asked the question in his sermon “Are you Visionary or Stationary in your walk with God?”  

He elaborated by saying we can either be "stationary and pessimistic", seeing ourselves as powerless and thinking we are useless and with our lives governed by fear or we can be "visionary and committed" with our lives committed to the principles of God, serving and trusting God wholeheartedly in our lives and finding strength and comfort in being deeply rooted in Him.  Of course, there was much more than I can put here, but if you are interested in listening to the whole service, you can find it here..

After the service, we joined with others for coffee, biscuits and chat, then went out for our usual drive, looking for dereliction.  Mr. HCB had decided we would go along the A4, and he had a particular place in mind but I didn’t have a clue where we were going, so just sat back and enjoyed the ride.  

Eventually, having passed Avebury, we came to a lay-by just along on the Yatesbury turning and quite a lot of other people also had the same idea, many of them dog walkers.  The sun was shining and there was a gentle breeze, so we were happy to wander along by the side of the gallops, which are used regularly by horses kept at the racing stables at Beckhampton.  

We didn’t find that much in the way of dereliction, and certainly no buildings, but you will see from collage that we did find some abandoned keys on a fence, which must have been there for sometime, as they were quite rusty.  On the right of the collage are several shots of tree trunks mainly in the beech grove, some of which were derelict and at least one was a good example of pareidolia, so of course, I took that for my lovely Blip friend, LSquare, who is the Queen of Pareidolia!

We also saw several people with dogs, and I know my friend, Gill, will love the ones being walked by the lady in the middle top row of the collage.  They were very well behaved, except “George”, who, in her words, was being a “little monkey”.  Of course, that fella got in my shots again, but they do give some interest to them!  The countryside was beautiful today, with the corn ready to be harvested, glowing in the sun, and we also saw several birds of prey.

Sadly, on our walk, we saw plenty of dog mess, which hadn’t been cleared up by the owners, so when we saw the man, shown in the bottom right of my collage, picking up after his dog, I told him he deserved a Gold Star for doing it - and that he was doing more than many others had bothered to do.  He asked if he got a medal, so I told him I would take his photograph and he willingly obliged by posing for me, with his dog behind him.  You need to look closely at his face - it’s a picture and I didn’t realise his expression until I looked at the shots on my computer when we got home.  

All in all a great day - I am a "visionary", if you are interested - as is Mr. HCB - there are already too many pessimists in the world!  I finish with this quote, mentioned by Jide in his sermon:

“The only thing worse than being blind 
     is having sight but no vision.” 
Helen Keller