And it’s only early days…
James Cathcart
May 06, 2023
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John 10: 10 (NRSVA)
10 The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.
This month we have been thinking about olden days, golden days, unfolding days and emboldened days of faith and as our theme All Our Days comes to a close we consider that it is still only early days yet! Jesus promises abundance. A love without limit.
The number of generations between us and when Jesus lived his human life…80. That’s it. Not a lot is it? I was shocked to do the maths recently and work out that if a new generation comes around every 25 years that’s only 80 over two thousand years. The events of Jesus’s earthy ministry can feel an incredibly long time ago but 80 people is nothing. You would’t blink seeing them at a mid-sized train station. They would vanish in a football stadium. They could comfortably attend a (presumably historically themed) wedding.
Imagine getting 80 people in a room that lived lives overlapping one another between the first century and now. The abundant variety you would see! Different languages and cultures, clothes, expressions, mannerisms. An unbroken chain from then to you. A wild non-linear chain, zigzagging the globe, but a continuous chain none-the-less. A chain of faith and doubt, love, lament and laughter.
A girl shoves a letter in her cloak, one she has easily memorised but still carries close, and crosses a desert.
A boy in a market rattles his head, it buzzes so much with the implication of what he’s just heard in the square.
A nun weeps at the manuscript before her, she weeps that she gets to hold it, that she gets to touch it.
A man in a coracle, lashed by rain and salt, looks at the imposing stonework on the shore and the more imposing figures hidden within, and digs deep from ancient words in a new language.
Another ploughs his field and thanks God for this stretch of his earth.
A woman in a cotton mill hums hymns under her breath as she works.
Another takes shelter when the air raid sounds and finds herself praying the Lord’s Prayer at the exact same time as a stranger.
You, here.
Abundance.
PRAYER:
Dear God we thank you for these early days of your abundance.
What you have achieved and what you will achieve through your limitless love.
Amen.
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