A message we need to hear

David Jones on the timeless message of God’s love in an ever-changing world

WELL done St Fagan’s! The National Museum of Welsh history has been awarded the UK’s Museum of the Year 2019 award with a £100,000 prize.

There was stiff competition, but St Fagan’s came through and rightly so. The open-air museum is home to more than 40 historical buildings – from Iron Age roundhouses to a post-war prefab bungalow transported and reerected on the museum’s 100-acre site.

We can also see blacksmiths and clog-makers show off traditional skills and experience crafts such as stone carving, pottery and woodwork.

To walk around the many exhibits and to visit the reconstructed buildings such as the Institute, the Cambrian stores and especially the miner’s cottages has all the nostalgia and ‘feel’ of times long gone. St Teilo’s Church, the church on the marsh is an experience in itself. To stand and see the prereformation murals which were discovered in the process of reconstruction is truly amazing.

How easily we get sentimental about the past, looking back with longing to how things used to be. On many Facebook pages communities encourage inclusion of photographs which show times long gone.

It’s especially true of religious patterns which have changed dramatically over the years. Llanelli at one time saw its many churches and chapels filled to capacity. Community life was often based around the weeknight activities from ‘Band of Hope’ meetings to mutual improvement societies both aimed at influencing young lives for good.

There were choral societies in every chapel and ‘Eisteddfodau’ which encouraged young talent with many who went on to take on the world with their singing and acting talents.

Despite the changing world and society in which we all live we have an unchanging Gospel which has spanned the centuries and is as relevant today as ever. God is love and that love extends to us all in whatever situations we find ourselves.

It’s a message we need to hear in the darkness and turmoil of the 21st Century because its central theme is love of God and of loving our neighbour as we love ourselves.

If the churches and chapels of our towns, cities and villages are reminiscent of an age long gone, the timeless message of God’s love is as real and as much needed as ever.

Nothing to do with sentimentality and empty emotion and everything to do with living as Jesus taught us, after all He is the same yesterday, today and forever.