Christian values are alive and well

I THINK we need not worry that less people actually call themselves Christian. Perhaps the truth is there are more and more people too self-effacing to do so but in reality are increasingly spreading Christ’s teaching to love one another, as shown throughout our troubled land.

As an old lady who recently had a most caring spell in hospital, followed by help from kind family, friends and carers and now back home in my lovely, kind and understanding Devon village, have I not experienced first hand this love Christ was trying to teach us?

What really matters in life, whoever we are, rich or poor, is caring for each other; caring too for the beautiful Creation which surrounds us, lifting our souls beyond all understanding.

In the early 17th century, the poet George Herbert always saw God as his friend, “not some overbearing tyrant... who is still talked about in cold and tortured language in some churches”* (Not ours!).

In Herbert’s poem Love, he never mentions the word God, he personifies Love as rather an elderly gentleman friend asking him to dinner.

The poet at first is too self-effacing and conscious of his sins, so can’t accept, but Love gently talks him round.

“You must sit down, sayes Love, and taste my meat: So I did sit and eat.”*

There are some lovely little bits of humour in this poem. Do read it, if you get a chance. It’s so up to date for us now when you look at our country and all the people who flock to our shores.

We do try to be welcoming and friendly, don’t we? Christianity is thriving.

I think Love would be quite a happy old Host, don’t you?

* Quotations taken from My Sour Sweet Days by George Herbert, edited with reflections on the poems by Mark Oakley.

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