Dear Friends
The final words of George Eliot’s book “Middlemarch” say this: “But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts: and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.”
In last Sunday’s evening service at Windsor, I reflected on the way in which ordinary people have helped to grow and develop our story as disciples of Christ Jesus and ordinary people in the Bible, such as Mary, Martha and Lazarus have inspired us and drawn us into their stories.
Day by day we are encouraged to dream big dreams and to live them out on the world stage. Our young people can do that in a way we never imagined because of the power of social media, and we are told over and over “You can be anything you want to be.” I don’t know how true that really is – we are hemmed about by the vagaries of our upbringing, our education, our genetic inheritance and the traumas we have experienced and all of these impact the choices we are able to make. It seems to me however, that it is worth remembering that for every Olympian there are thousands of young people enjoying sport for sport’s sake; for every politician there are millions of people setting the world to rights over the morning coffee or the evening dinner table; for every saint there are hundreds of the faithful, patterning their lives as closely as possible on that of Jesus and praying that their witness will be true.
To those who knew Jesus as he grew up, he was simply the carpenter’s son, then an itinerant preacher, notable for his ability to heal, who Rome and the Jewish authorities eventually decided to be too much of a good thing and crucified. The only reason his life was not a faithfully lived but hidden one was because he refused to remain in the tomb and his leaping forth at Easter to cry resurrection promise, made ordinary the idea of eternity. Not ordinary in that there is nothing special in it, but in that it is available to all. At this season of remembrance, let us hold fast to that truth for ourselves and for those who have gone before, that Jesus is the resurrection and the life and those who believe in him, even though they die will live, and everyone who lives and believes in him shall never die.
God bless,
Vicci