Notes from St Mary’s Church
A Weekend that Changed the World Forever...
Firstly, let me thank you for the warm welcome Joy and I have had since moving here only four months ago. It’s been a really busy few months, but we are slowly finding our feet even if I still need my sat-nav to find most of the places I need to go. It doesn’t seem very long since Christmas, but Easter is almost upon us.
Easter is much more than chocolate eggs, lambs running in fields and daffodils flowering. We can talk about all these things as signs of life, or even signs of new life, yet that’s a pale reflection to the message Easter really brings. At Easter Christians remember a weekend that changed the world forever.
The historian Tom Holland has said, “Whether in Korea or in Tierra del Fuego, in Alaska or in New Zealand, the cross on which Jesus had been tortured to death became the most globally recognised symbol of a god there has ever been.” And that seems fair enough.
How do you account for this worldwide brand recognition? According to the Pew Research Center’s 2015 prediction, Christianity will have more than 3 billion followers by 2050. In the UK, where the decline of Christianity has been much talked of, some churches (including here in our benefice) are finding that people are coming to faith in numbers not been seen in many years.
The Times recently reported on research by Christian publisher SPCK Group about the increase in Bible sales in the UK, and previously reported on young adults turning to faith. It seems that Christianity is not boring, irrelevant and dying but that many are finding that it is at the cross where we find meaning, value, truth and hope.
Why not come along this Easter and consider for yourself the meaning of the cross?