Sandra has kindly offered me a couple of guest blogs this weekend, for which I am more grateful than I expected to be! It feels strange not to be sharing my MWiB adventures with you regularly, as I have done over the past two years.
Readers of this blog will be aware of my love for Germany and all things German, and so will understand how delighted I was to receive an invitation from Bishop Rosemarie Wenner to join a small team of European Methodists here in Wittenberg for the celebrations of 500 years of Reformation. I am learning lots about Luther and heaps about history!
I am also enjoying another of my passions – meeting new people and hearing their stories. As visitors pass by our stand we offer them the chance to assemble a four-piece puzzle, cleverly devised by a team of German Methodists to explore the idea of reformation interactively. This approach appeals to the teacher in me! Once they have completed the first puzzle we introduce a new piece, which has to be integrated into a new square. As they struggle to reform the square we gently point out a key Bible verse from Psalm 118 – the stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone…
With this clue in mind our passers-by then proceed to complete the puzzle with this new piece in the corner. The old pieces have to be repositioned, sometimes in unexpected ways, before the solution becomes apparent.
I leave you to imagine the kind of conversations which then ensue, about life, the world, the universe, the church and faith. Before those conversations there will often have been much head-scratching, frustration and also laughter!
I wonder if you recognise your own church and community in this analogy?
Mit vielen lieben Grüßen!
Anne
