| Week 1, Day 1 |
 Making sense of life This is the start of an exploration of what difference it makes to be a Christian. It’s the faith that two billion people across the globe consider themselves part of. That’s one third of the world’s population – so this is important! The series lasts for five weeks, and each day there will be a short chapter to read. It will always include an extract from the Bible – the book that Christians respect as the foundation of all they believe and do. Later in the series you can find out more about the Bible and about how Jesus, the founder of the Christian faith, is at its heart. You will also be invited, half way through each week, to contribute your own thoughts about life and faith, and the interactive pages will allow you to compare what others who have used Now a Christian recently are thinking. Because Christianity is two thousand years old, and worldwide, the details of the way Christians practise it differ in various places. (Sometimes they argue about it, which doesn’t help anyone!) However, at the core of the faith are three things that every single Christian believes. First, there is a God. Second, in a way so unique that we can barely understand it, God touched this planet two thousand years ago in the person of Jesus. And third, that matters! To make up your mind that there is a God affirms something tremendously important about being alive. It means that you believe that you do not exist by accident. Someone knows that you are there. Someone decided that you should be there. It was someone’s intention that the cosmos in all its vastness and microscopic detail should come into being. That was and is God. Christians reject the view that the presence of humans on this beautiful planet has come about by an unplanned sequence of events. They do not accept that life is merely a phenomenon that overtakes some planets in their dying years. Instead they believe that God always intended that human life, with its capacity for intelligence, goodness and love, should be the climax of a vast plan. We are incredibly fortunate to be part of that plan, because we are alive, and human life is bursting with potential. Three thousand years ago a musician wrote this song, which has been preserved for us in the Bible. Although it was written ten centuries before Jesus was born, he knew it well. Sadly no one knows the tune now, but the lyrics are great: Shout for joy to the Lord, all the earth. Worship the Lord with gladness; come before him with joyful songs. Know that the Lord is God. It is he who made us, and we are his; we are his people, the sheep of his pasture … The Lord is good and his love endures forever. From Psalm 100 The singer had obviously never heard of atoms, DNA or the big bang. He didn’t even know that to create a human life required a sperm and an egg. But he knew three unchangeable things about life: It couldn’t happen without God; Humans are uniquely special to God; Everything about that is good. No wonder the song is bursting with happiness! |
| < Prev | Next > |
|---|