Bathtime

This is the lovely home that the Lord has blessed us with during our time in Cambridge. It is spacious, beautiful, and close to the city centre. We are grateful for the Lord's mercies and Chad and Emily van Dixhoorn's kindness. I have taken advantage of the recent heat wave here to stay at home and read. Lucy has ventured into the city on a number of occasions and invariably comes back delighted with the city's beauty. When you see the pictures you can understand why. Our friends, the Oosterhofs, arrived on Wednesday and so we figured that Thursday was Bath time. We travelled the 3 hours to Bath, formerly a Roman town famous for its hot spring baths. The beautiful Bath Abbey dominates the town square. According to one of the guides in the Abbey it is an evangelical Church.
Adjacent to the Church is the Roman baths and what was formerly the Roman temple to the goddess Solus Minerva. When I saw the altar below I had to think of the Apostle Paul in Athens. We took a fascinating tour through the baths, marvelling at the antiquity of the excavations. These baths flourished between the first and fifth centuries AD. No, the Oosterhofs didn't go for a bath though we did stick our hands in the 46 C water. The spring produces 13 litres per second.In keeping with the Roman theme, in the late 1700s, The Circus, first conceived as an area for sports, was built as a circle of town houses with three streets entering the circle. As darkness fell we arrived at Avebury, the inexpensive and accessible Stonehenge. Rocks of this size were quarried and transported 3 miles around 3500BC and arranged in a circle. No one knows why but modern day pagans gather here en masse on June 21 and December 21. You identify with Paul's reaction when he visited Athens: greatly distressed to see that the city was full of idols.Yesterday marked the 11th anniversary of my ordination to the gospel ministry. I am humbled by the privilege to be an ambassador of Christ and continue to pray for grace to be a faithful servant of the Lord. Tomorrow I am scheduled to preach for my friend Ian Hamilton in Cambridge Presbyterian Church as he continues his holiday.