Faith Files
“SAY something positive!” my wife told me on a miserable morning when I sat down to write Faith Files.
The news was all so depressing, I couldn’t see what was worth mentioning. Then it started to snow, and my giddy daughter told me to write about that instead.
Bright snow vs dreary current affairs. She had a point. TV collects the world’s woes into a deep, dark pool of anxiety, which seems to circle around the news cycle until we feel ourselves pulled under by it all. Worse still, I get a news feed from Barnabas Fund that tells me of all murders and persecutions of Christians around the world that never make it into the main news. It’s all so gloomy.
Wouldn’t it be good if we could just pour snow over the whole lot and have something pretty and bright to talk about?
Back in October came such a good news story.
It wasn’t nearly big enough to make the ten o’clock headlines, but it made into the middle pages of a couple of broadsheets. It took place in Texas, when a white female cop killed an unarmed black man. She’d wandered into the wrong apartment after coming off a long shift, and thinking she’d stumbled into an intruder in her own home, warned him, aimed her gun and shot Botham Jean dead. And so another dark drip flows into the growing pool of hurt that covers the world.
Until the trial, that is. After the cop had admitted her guilt and sentence had been passed, Brandt Jean, the brother of the dead man, asked to make a statement.
He told her that he forgave her, because his brother would have done that. He told her that he wanted the best for her, and that he wanted her to know Jesus.
Trembling, he begged the judge if he could go and give the killer a hug. She agreed. There was open weeping in the court.
Jesus taught us to pray “Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.” Brandt, on one of the hardest days of his life, showed us what that looks like. He took something dark and terrible, and covered it right over, making the world a slightly brighter and more beautiful place. He forgave her. Revd Dr Jason Ward, St Mary’s
Chaddesden metres high (higher than Tesco’s superstore roof) to a more environmentally acceptable six metres high.
Our MPs should be looking after the interests of the residents of Stapleford and Sandiacre. These communities will be isolated from each other for a year as the railway bridge is replaced.
HS2 itself is not commercially viable. Consider the money paid to the government by the current franchisees which would not pay the interest on a £106bn loan, let alone pay back the capital.
Stuart Allan, Long Eaton