Getting to Melbourne & treasures in heaven.

G'day. Well I've caught the train to Melbourne & I'm sitting in Jon's office writing this blog. It's been a great few days leading up to getting here & for the trip down. Thursdays walk around the park was postponed to Friday & I didn't do anything on Thursday. Unfortunately unbeknownst to me Everett had received my message about walking in the park and was there at 4pm. Friday I went for the walk around the park but Rebecca couldn't go because someone had found her cat & she was waiting for a call from them, so I went to her place for a cup of tea & by the time I got there the cat was returned. We took Betty for a short walk at the park near her parents place & she invited me for dinner & a video with Leonie. We watched 'Changing Places.'

Saturday I went over to Jaqi & Ev's place to keep their son & Ev company & on finding out they were having Bill & Judy, & Eleni & Bob over for diner to show them pictures of Ev's trip to the Himalayas I gatecrashed & hung around. I spent a lot of time keeping their son company because I had seen the slides before. While we were eating & after he went to bed I sat in but I was pretty tired & just sat quietly without really joining in.

Sunday was a good service & Michael went with me. I had arranged to go for a walk with a friend after the service & by the time we were ready to eat they had run out of food (they had lunch on at Church for the first time in quite a while), so a bunch of us ended up sitting around at Abou Ali's having a bite to eat.

Went to Sunday night pizza & wine at Bill & Judy's, on for the first time in a while. That has always been the social highlight of my week when it's been on & Sunday was as good as ever. I wasn't so tired so I really joined in.

Monday the train trip to Melbourne was quite good. Now that I know how easy it is to get here I'll be visiting more often (certainly a lot sooner than 6 years which is how long it was since the last time I saw Jon, Liz & their children). Having a portable CD/MP3 player has made long trips a breeze. Playing MP3 CDs is neat because not only can you fit 6 hours or more of music on one CD but it doesn't use up the batteries as much as with regular CDs (with MP3s it takes a few seconds to download the next 2 minutes then it stops spinning the CD until it needs to get some more music). Unfortunately I couldn't find any of my MP3 CDs. I had heaps of old partially used batteries with me so batteries weren't a problem.

Jon & I went to dinner in Brunswick St & checked out a bookshop while catching up with each other, then Liz rang & said their children wanted to meet me before they went to bed so we headed home. Meeting Jon was no great shock, we have a couple of grey hairs where there weren't any but we haven't changed much, but when I got home it was a real shock because although I knew his children would be 6 years older, here were these people & it is amazing to have this friend I've known since high school having children who are independent people with their own lives. Their oldest was the only one who remembered me. I keep seeing them thinking by the expressions on their faces which is more interesting than with very young children. I caught up with Liz.

This morning Jon has brought me into Tabor and showed me around & now I'm checking my email & writing this blog while he does some work.

Something I have been thinking about for the last few days and thought about a lot on the train down here is relationships and the kingdom of heaven. I am rich, fabulously wealthy, in that I have over 300 friends and over 30 really good friends, and most of these friendships are eternal ones (& maybe all will be by the time Jesus is through with us). My friendships now are the best part about my life, & that part is really good, but not only is it good now, it will continue on forever just getting better. Take Jon. I love Jon & every time we are together I grow. I love the time we spend together and even if we don't get together for 6 years he is still a part of the richness of my life. I love Liz and all their family as well. They are all part of the richness of my life, but these friendships will not end with death. My relationships with him & his family are some of my treasures in heaven.

I have heard conflicting things about whether we will continue relationships we have had here on earth after we die or whether we will forget everything that has happened. It seems to me we have a relational God who created us for relationship, whom we broke relationship with, who sent Jesus to restore the relationship & usher in a new and more intimate way for us to relate to him, whose whole universe is summed up in "Love the Lord your God with all your heart & all your soul & all your mind & all your strength" & "love your neighbor as yourself", & that breaking off relationships where not is not necessary is the exact opposite of his character. Also although I have heard of people coming back from death or near death experiences not remembering their wife or friends here, I have heard of people in that situation remembering people who are already there. Perhaps it's only the broken relationships we will forget.

I hope I will at least start a song about all this while I am here.

Blessings,
Joe :-)