A QUESTION OF FAITH

With Rev Malcolm Clarke of The Vine Christian Book and Coffee shop in The Borough Hinckley ON Thursday June 15, the Community Relations Forum is meeting to celebrate the life and times of Jo Cox MP one year on from her untimely death on June 16 last year.

Jo’s first speech to Parliament had within it the memorable lines “We are far more united and have far more in common than that which divides us”. It was a message which one man found altogether too threatening and it cost Jo the chance to live out the rest of her life.

Nevertheless a year on it is she who is remembered and celebrated, not her attacker.

There will always need to be those in every age and in every community who are bridge builders; who hold out the hand of friendship to the iffy, the distinctly dodgy, and to the ‘certainly not one of us’. If we allow fragmentation through lack of love, lack of goodwill, lack of effort then we are all the poorer for it.

I am writing in the wake of the atrocities in Manchester, and in London, hoping and praying that between now and when you read this there will be nothing, no-one to add to that sorry list. At the same time I am writing the day before the General Election. Like you I hear what the polls predict; but like you I shall have to wait until all the votes are counted to know who will hereafter lead the nation.

I have no crystal ball, and frankly I am glad for that. But I do know there is a God in Heaven to whom we might turn in distress and sorrow both personal and national. A Father who knows what it’s like to lose a Son. A God in Heaven who holds all our future in the palm of His hand and with whom to walk is reassurance and confidence for all our tomorrows, come what may.

Whatever your motivation then, and mine is my trust in Jesus, will you resolve to make some or other positive contribution to our community; to embody the disposition Jo Cox had in up in Yorkshire. Attitudes and actions must change for the better; reaching out must replace holding back; and then perhaps the ‘certainly not one of us’ will become a friend, an ally, and not an incidental at best, a foe at worst.

I count it a privilege to walk with Jesus. But that does me, and others, no good at all unless something of Him is apparent in me. He touched the leper, went to the outsider, and endured the catcalls of the self righteous of the day. God give me, and us, the grace to do the same.

Should you want to celebrate Jo’s life on June 15, mail Edwina Grant (Edwina. Grant@hinckley-bosworth. gov.uk ) and we’ll see you then.