A QUESTION OF FAITH

With Rev John Whittaker of St Mary’s Church in Hinckley CHRISTIANS make an astonishing claim; it is a claim which has brought billions of people more than 2,000 years into a living, loving relationship with God and it is a claim which provides both inspiration and challenge to those who respond to it and seek to live by it.

And the claim is this. God made a choice to reveal Godself to us, and the way God reveals Godself, was by coming and being one of us in the life of Jesus, living our lives, experiencing our joys and our sadness, our triumphs and our calamities.

The clearest way we can know about the ongoing life, nature and will of God is by learning about the life of Jesus, for the 33 years of Jesus’ life provide an incredible insight into the eternal life of God. In the opportunity to respond to the love, hope and transforming life of Jesus we are brought into the love giving, hope filling and life transforming presence of God.

St Mary’s Church in Hinckley is spending the month of June learning about, praying for and responding to the largest movement of refugees in Europe since the Second World War, fleeing lands of conflict, danger, oppression or starvation.

We are doing this for several reasons: the blessings of relationship with one another, a sense of solidarity with those at a time of need and a desire to offer welcome and hospitality to name a few.

But perhaps the most important reason is that when God shared in our life in the birth of Jesus, God chose to be a refugee.

Shortly after Jesus was born, his parents and their new born son had to flee terrible political persecution resulting in mass infanticide as King Herod ordered the murder of all boys two years and younger around the town of Bethlehem. The journey was on foot or perhaps with a donkey, for all 429 miles of it. For a small part, the journey was in fertile land, but most of it was across desolate, dry, hot desert down the modern day Gaza strip and across the Sinai. When the family arrived at the border of neighbouring Egypt, they could have found the border shut, their claim rejected but instead they received welcome and had a safe home until they were able to return to their homeland a few years later.

The people of Egypt offered sanctuary to God the refugee and in doing so have given unparalleled blessings to the world. The belief that in the life of Jesus we see the presence of God in all times, means we believe that when refugees arrive in our town and borough and we provide sanctuary and welcome we are doing that for God and it is an immense blessing both for those who receive safe sanctuary and those who provide it.

God bless.