| Making Sense of Life |
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N  ow a Christian is a five-week, email-based introduction to the Christian faith. This study looks at our place in the universe. A man fell over a cliff and, half way down, managed to grab hold of a shrub and break his fall. Dangling precariously, he looked first up, then down, and realised that if he was going to survive he would need a miracle. Lifting his eyes to the heavens, he shouted, ‘Is there anybody up there?’ To his amazement, a voice inside his head whispered, ‘Yes, I am up here.’ ‘I need help!’ he screeched. ‘Put your foot on the tiny toehold, reach your hand to the jutting rock, let go of the shrub, and inch by inch I will stay with you all the way to the bottom of the cliff.’ Terrified at the prospect, the man pleaded, ‘I was thinking of something more miraculous.’ ‘That’s not the deal on offer,’ came the voice. ‘But if you trust me, I won’t leave you at any moment until the very end.’ There was a long, thoughtful silence. And then the man called out, ‘Is there anybody else up there?’ Not a true story, of course, but full of truths! The most important is that humans did not invent God; God invented humans. Our task, as centuries have gone by, has been to work out what that God is like. Christians, and before them, the Jews, believe that the sole God, stupendously powerful though he is, is one who can be known. And, more remarkable still, God knows each human as an individual. This is how, three thousand years ago, one of the poets of the Bible expressed it: O Lord, you have searched me and you know me. You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar. You discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all my ways. Before a word is on my tongue you know it completely, O Lord. You hem me in – behind and before; you have laid your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain… For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. From Psalm 139 We are not alone! Great, humble, young, old, able-bodied, disabled, believer, atheist, or half way down a cliff – no one is alone! There is, however, one further truth that Christians believe, which makes Christian faith absolutely unique. They believe that God’s knowledge of human beings has reached out so completely and profoundly that he has dwelt in a human body. This is more than saying that there is a spark of God inside every man and woman (although that’s true of every loving, good and creative breath we take). God took human flesh, and walked and talked among us – Jesus, the founder of the faith! When a child asks, ‘What is God like?’ a good answer would be, ‘He is like Jesus.’ That is only a start, of course, to a lifetime of thinking about a question that needs to stretch your brain way beyond anything it is capable of. But what a start! To find out more, or to sign up, visit www.nowachristian.org |
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