Showhome opens

We visited the first show home at the Wixams development yesterday. Had an interesting conversation with the person who showed us round, and the house was an interesting design too.

First off it's a three storey house, as are many on this particular site according to the brochure. The master bedroom is at the top, complete with an en-suite shower room. There is a study, for home working, but if you want anything more than a desk and waste paper bin, you'd be pushing the space to capacity. Not designed for someone like me who works from home using lots of books and resources.

What also caught my attention was the lack of a dining room. When  I was growing up, we had a large kitchen in which we had the dining table and a separate lounge. But the last three main homes we've had all had separate dining rooms and it felt strange to be in a four bedroomed house without one.

Still, this is the first housebuilder on site and it will be interesting to see what others build. Strange to think that it wasn't that long ago that Sovereign Park, the newer part of Shortstown, was built and most of the four bedroom houses were detached and had dining rooms and maybe even utility rooms too.

Seeing it from heaven's point-of-view: John 6

As I make my way slowly through the text of John's gospel I wonder how Jesus had some of his conversations with his disciples. In John 6 the narrative focuses on the "Bread of heaven" and it begins with Jesus sitting down with his disciples on a mountainside watching the crowd coming towards them.

John tells us that Jesus already knew what he was going to do, so the conversation with Philip is not in search of a solution but more in search of faith, finding out where Philip had got to on his spiritual journey. I imagine that Jesus sits down, leans across to Philip and casually asks him, "Philip, where shall we buy food for all these folk?"

The deeper question that might be hidden in that simple question is: Philip, what do you see, a problem or an opportunity? Can you see things from the perspective of heaven or can you only see them from an earthly perspective?

As I sorted out the photographs from the Wixams, I thought about the perspective I have as I look across the barren expanse that will eventually become village one. Do I see all the obstacles, all the reasons why we can't hope to reach all those new homes, new people, new families. Or do I take a heavenly perspective, offering the little I have in order to see the wonderful multiplication of the kingdom, the perspective from which Jesus sees things. 

Wixams underway

A few weeks ago Ally, David and I went over to the Wixams development site to take a few photographs. Currently the work is almost completed on re-routing the A6, and work has begun on laying out the infrastructure for village one of the development.

There's not a lot to see, but the photographs will give you and idea of what's taking shape.

The Flickr widget on the right is showing a few more of the site photographs.