A very meaningful picture

A nice big pic to start off with today, as it contains lots of carefully-placed ingredients!

First up of course you can see another fantastic bunch of people on the Dock Walk yesterday – lots of different backgrounds and great chat.  Behind them you can see a perfect mixture of old and new: the brick building to the left of the picture is the old Drawing Office, the magnificent building where Titanic was designed.  Towards the right of the picture you can see on the billboard the artist’s impression of the new Titanic Belfast visitor attraction – the visionary concept which was unveiled a few years ago.  And in the middle you can see that the concept is fast becoming a reality.

It all ties very neatly into Dock-World as this week marks another big step on the road of the Dock vision becoming reality.  On Friday evening we’ll be hosting a posh dinner in the Drawing Office to launch the Dock Business Plan to a gathering of influential politicians, business leaders and senior church figures.  Like the gleaming cladding being added to Titanic Belfast (that’s the stuff at the very top right of the pic), it’s another building block on the way to our goal – a boat based in the heart of the TQ, serving as a chaplaincy sofa to build community, faith and life in the Titanic Quarter.   Like the Titanic Belfast building, it’s a goal which not long ago was just a dream, but is fast becoming physical reality.  (Although, as we’re reminded by the cranes in the distance and the orange barrier in the foreground, it’s a work in progress with lots still to do.)  So when this photo was taken, we had just stopped to pray for the event on Friday and all the further progress which we hope will spring from it – and your prayers would be hugely appreciated too.

Speaking of progress and change, Wordlive last week took us through the story of the Damascus Road conversion of Saul (the militant persecutor of the early church) to Paul (its greatest evangelist and advocate) – but we were really interested in the character of Ananias, the guy who felt a call from God to approach Saul and pray with him immediately after his conversion experience.  Putting ourselves back in the middle of the story, we realised that Ananias might have felt a bit like a persecuted inhabitant of Nazi Germany being asked to go and talk to Hitler…  So even though we only meet him for a couple of verses, Ananias is one of those great, inspiring characters from the early church – he was open enough to hear God’s voice, and then obedient enough to actually do what was being asked of him.  What a role model!