I wonder when you last received a card which started with those words?
It’s nice to be invited, isn’t it. Perhaps it’s a wedding invitation or for a birthday celebration. I remember Sir Ian Botham putting out a general invitation for members of the public to join him for a morning or an afternoon on his first charity walk from Land’s End to John O’Groats. That was back in 1985 and I think if I’d lived near to his route, I would have been tempted to take him up on his offer. But whether it’s a call from a friend asking if you’d like to go for a coffee or a neighbour popping round to see whether you’re up for a trip to the cinema or would like to go to a concert, it’s really nice to be on the receiving end of an invitation. And yet my suspicion is that, although we like being invited to something, we may not find it very easy to be the one who issues the invitation.
One way of reading the Bible is to see it as one long invitation from God to everyone to join him on the adventure of living life to the full. Some of Jesus’s earliest recorded words are deliberately invitational: ‘Come, follow me’. There was even an occasion when Jesus knew the fear factor was so high, because Zacchaeus was one of the widely disliked tax collectors, that he decided to invite himself: ‘Zacchaeus, I’m coming to your place for tea.’ It was a life-changing encounter (Luke, 19: 1-10).
The Church is still very much in the invitation business. On the inside of this edition of Bowdon Church News you’ll find a comprehensive catalogue of the huge variety of groups and activities which are run, partnered or sponsored by people in our church congregations here in Bowdon. If you are already part of one of the activities, please would you choose a friend you could invite to join you? If you haven’t joined us on our adventure of living life to the full, especially if you have recently moved to the area, we hope you will take a look through what’s on offer to see which of the groups you might enjoy.
And please consider yourself very warmly invited.
Ian Rumsey
Vicar of Bowdon