Friends

Sophie and Tommy have taken a couple of days leave and travelled a little further north. Today they went to Warwick Castle and it reminded me of going myself at 18 when I was staying with a school friend. There was a talk on when it had been used as a prison which we joined. I don’t remember much about it now, excepting that we were told there had been a time when a judge could offer you a choice between hanging and deportation to Australia. There were a couple of Australians in the party who, as you might imagine, found the idea that it had actually been a choice hilarious. “Yes,” said one, “Guaranteed death or a life in Paradise, that’s a tough choice!”

I am not going to rehearse all the reasons that using Australia as a penal colony was a terrible thing – we know it was – I merely note that I am aware of this in case anyone thinks I am being blasé or flippant about it. However, the Australian girl’s comment is fascinating in terms of Christianity. “Guaranteed death or a life in Paradise, that’s a tough choice!” Of course, she was being sarcastic. From her point of view, it was a no-brainer – Australia every time.

Mark’s work as a chauffeur-bearer for a Funeral Director takes him into some extraordinary churches, particularly in central London. They are glorious works of art which were intended to give the poor and down-trodden working classes of the city a glimpse of the glory of heaven. However hard daily life was, they would come to church on a Sunday and for one brief hour rest their bodies and feast their eyes. Never mind if the text was impenetrable and the preaching boring, they could see the future promise of the Christian life.

We live more in the now than in the future and of course, the “Pie in the sky when you die” model of Christian hope was never a good one. Jesus came “that they may have life in all its fullness” on earth and not just in some nebulous future. Nevertheless, I wonder if in our busy lives, we need to have some time still to think about the glories of heaven, if only so that we will remember that when we say “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven” we recall that we seek as disciples to grow more like Christ in who we are and how we are, and in so-doing, to shape a world that is more like heaven, a world that, because Jesus came, has a pattern and a way that leads us into paths of justice and mercy.

God bless,

Vicci