Pass the word

This male Satin Bower Bird (left) is introducing his lady love to the bower he has laboriously constructed and now is furnishing with scavenged items of blue.  What a picture for Valentine's Day!

We didn't see this display but we did see a bower exactly like this yesterday because Lindell knew exactly where to look for it. She had been told by Roger, another bird enthusiast. And how did he know where it was? Someone told him.

We would have missed the fascinating sight if interested individuals had not passed along the exciting word to others. I think it was D.T. Niles who said that evangelism was one beggar telling another beggar where to find food. So let's pass the Word along.

Computer evangelism

I pressed a couple of wrong keys on the parish computer a few weeks ago. Ever since, a kindly fellow called Jamie has been sending us emails congratulating us on downloading some kind of program and begging us to use it. Apparently it will change our lives.

Of course, this means we have to pay something, which was not at all what I had envisaged. So we have ignored Jamie and tried to get on with life. But the letters kept coming, getting warmer and even more friendly, all ostensibly signed by this charming Jamie.

Around the turn of the New Year, one of these emails earnestly enquired after my health and welfare. Being touched by the depth of his concern, but also somewhat cynical, I replied in the same serious tone expressing my great appreciation for his concern over my advanced prostate cancer. I shared the fact that we were having to move. I poured out my heart about the difficulties I was having in making a break with our very special church and community. I told him how hard it was to decide what to keep and what to throw out as we completely re-organise our lives around a smaller home a long way from here. And I ended by again expressing my thanks for his interest and suggesting that there might not be any point in future emails.

Since then, we still had regular emails from Jamie, all no doubt generated by the same computer. The last three have all said, successively, this is positively and absolutely the last and final chance for this discount. You have to admire him for his persistence.

I wonder if I am as zealous in inviting people to experience the wonderful things I have experienced in the faith which is so important to me. Have I got that persistent edge of evangelical zeal? On the other hand, if I do, does it sound like it was generated in a computer?