August is one of those months when you are either on holiday or having
time off. So if you are I hope that you are having a good holiday. As most
of you know I had a week in Spain in July. As a family we went to Tarragona,
or Tarraco as Augustus Caesar called it in the first century BC.

I would like to show you a picture that Liz took on that trip. Yes it shows a
fat man in front of a wall, and yes that fat man is me. But this is no
ordinary wall. This one was built by Augustus. it is 2100 years old.
One thing that the Romans were not, was jerry builders! A wall from
the biblical period. But is it a biblical wall?

Tradition has it that St Paul, after a two year imprisonment came to Spain to the
well established church at Terraco . Here is a link if you would like to
explore this idea a little more.http://johnsonspain.tripod.com/id69.html.
So by extension Paul may well have stood on the same spot as I am standing,
and he would have been about the same age, maybe even the same shape. That is
without the loud shirt.

This wall brought home to me the doctrine of the communion of the Saints. It
took me a little further that that. A gate is still standing that Paul used. And it
was only yesterday that it happened. Kinda makes you think that we are all in
this together. Paul, James and the rest of the Apostles are not long lost
folk of history, but living breathing men whose shadow has only just vanished.
They are out of reach, but only just. Pilgrims just over the next hill. And I am
catching them up fast.