We had another wonderful day here in Odder, not far from the sea between Jutland and Zealand — and south of Norway and north of Germany. We’ve been given blue skies and cool, lightly breezy evenings. The theme of the week is “Grace for the day: Nåde for i dag.” (The little circle above the ‘a’ in Nåde gives it a sound like an ‘o’.)
Yesterday our specific theme was Grace Restores so my Bible teaching, from about 10am-11am, was on the life of John: What he was learning from Jesus, what he was really like — and we looked at Mark 9, Mark 10, and Luke 9 — and then what he became. We reminded that because God restores humans in his grace over time, instead of all at once, we need to extend the grace of patience to those who are around us.
At 2pm we gathered in the Søpavillonen for a Seminar on the emerging church movement, and there must have been a hundred or so youngish Danes who gathered for the discussion. I presented the five streams that flow into Lake Emerging, and then we had a good hour of Q&A — there were both questions about “what is going on in the USA and what do American evangelicals think of the emerging movement?” and questions that came from “what is going on here in Denmark?” Two young Danes, Henrich and Tomas, led the group into small group discussions about what is going on in Denmark.
We then went for a long walk in the neighborhood. Besides sparrows and thrushes and a great titmouse, I did see a bird that is sparrow-sized with a longer tail that it constantly flicks — and I can’t for the life of me remember its name. Someone might be able to help. (We used to see them in England.)
After the evening worship, led as always by a brilliant worship team from København, we wandered over to the coffee tent and listened to a pastor’s wife sing American rhythm and blues — she was amazing. She had all of us standing to clap and tap our feet.
It was just getting dark when we got to our room — almost 11pm.