Last week we ran a competition with Damaris Trust to win ‘red carpet’ tickets to the movie premiere of ‘Flight’ starring Denzel Washington.

The question was:

What’s your favourite place you’ve ever visited on a plane, and why?

And the winning answer:

“Heathrow. For 10 years while my children were young I travelled extensively on business. Heathrow meant I was home to see my wife and kids. No better place to be.”

Our winner was Tony Ingall of Enfield – here is what he thought of the night:

“I never enter competitions.  Well that’s not strictly true, I enter competitions so rarely that I struggle to remember the last time.  As for winning anything, the last time I won something it was a bottle of whisky in a raffle in 1977.

While reposting the CVM competition entry on our church FaceBook page, the question caught my eye.  I’ve travelled a lot, mainly on business.  Seattle, San Francisco, LA, San Jose, Boston, New York, Philadelphia (so often the bar staff there greet me by name), Rome, Brussels, Paris, Singapore … I think you get the picture, always a bag packed ready to go.

So my favourite place, well you saw the answer.  When you travel that much, it is always good to come home to the family.  To those you love and who love you and support you.  Those who have the grace to let you do the work God has called you to, even though it takes you away from them.

How did the evening go?  It was great!  A colleague from work joined me as my wife was away (her turn for once).  We got to walk on the red carpet in Leicester Square with the crowds clapping and cheering, strangely no-one wanted our autographs.  They seemed more interested in Denzel Washington and Kelly Reilly for some reason I can’t explain.  The film was not what I expected.  I’d imagined something more investigative.  You know the sort of thing, a fatal accident caused by a failing part, the big bad manufacturer, who has been doing things on the cheap, covers up to avoid a disastrous run on the share price and the lone investigator brings them down.  Instead we got an insight into the moral dilemma of a drug taking alcoholic.  Denzel Washington was superb as the pilot disintegrating under the influence.  Kelly Reilly gave a awesome performance as a trick-turning drug addict.

It’s not a film for the faint hearted, the easily offended or those with a fear of flying but definitely a film worth seeing.”

If you would like to know more about the film and the themes in it, Damaris have produced the official community resources  - see it here: www.damaris.org/flight

The further I read into this book, I see the simplicity and strength of the message that both Gavin and Anne portray. Lets be honest, we can all come into contact with these ‘Stumbling Blocks’ in our lives. The authors bring these obstacles to life using anecdotes and help you to relive their memories with them. They help you to get over, under, around and through every Stumbling Block we can face as Christians. Each chapter goes into detail on these obstacles and the questions at the end of them, really made me think about my life and my walk with God.

The authors particularly focus one chapter on the lack of men in church. At CVM this is a big issue that we are tackling because as the quote they use, by David Murrow, in this chapter says “Christianity’s primary delivery system, the local church, is perfectly designed to reach women and older folks. That’s why our pews are filled with them. But this church system offers little to stir the masculine heart, so men find it dull and irrelevant. The more masculine the man the more likely he is to dislike church.” He leaves a challenge to us men. “I want my son to be a better man than me. I want my daughter to marry a better man than me. But I wanna be a tough act to follow!”

This book has affirmed what I have seen in my life, that through perseverance and putting God first we can overcome these Stumbling Blocks. As we see in the story of David and Goliath, he was a lowly shepherd boy going against a 9 foot tall monster of a man, who scared everyone even King Saul. With a stone, slingshot and God David overcame the huge obstacle in his way, against all odds. We can’t see the benefits of the obstacles when we are going through them but as Gavin and Anne show in this book the benefits are so great afterwards. They use a cracking quote from Molière in the conclusion which confirms this. It says “The greater the obstacle, the more glory in overcoming it.”

Jack Undrell (Intern 2)

This book is available to buy here