You will find all our churches open every day. We have no way of recording how many people come to find peace in our churches and what it may mean to them but I think it is such an important part of sharing these sacred spaces and the presence of God that is found within each of the churches. It may be that many people find a sense of God’s love and acceptance and peace and that our churches are a way in which God’s grace may be shared.Grace is a wonderful thing to understand: it is the undeserved and unearned gift of love that God shares with us. It is not a gift in the sense of something we can have and hold onto; grace is the gift of transformation that comes through experiencing love in all its forms: including that of the presence of God.I taught Philosophy of Religion for so many years but would always want everyone to realise that God is not an idea or a proposition that can be proved or disproved. God is experienced in relationship and in love.Grace is transforming love because it takes us back to what love means: forgiveness and forgiving, the possibilities of a new start, trust, peace and indeed the joy and excitement of beginning again within a renewed relationship. We can’t make that happen by ourselves and for grace to work we need to accept our vulnerability, our brokenness and even through knowing that we fall short of what of we have the potential to be. That is what humanity was like when God came to us through the person of Jesus and that is how we may be in our own lives when God reaches out to us through grace. One of the most well known verses in the Bible is John 3.16:“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.”The gift that Jesus brings to us is eternal life and it is through grace that we can accept this and live within all that God gives to us. It is not simply about life after this life because eternity is not something that begins when we die. When that verse says that faith means we ‘may not perish’ it is not talking about judgement or punishment after death. Perishing is how we can allow life here and now to wither away; to become less that it should be; to be overtaken by concerns and worries that we do not need to have. Life is a gift to be enjoyed and shared and lived in its fulness here and now. And the final measure of life is never in what a person has accumulated but the love and the kindness they have shared. Just as our churches are open to all; please let us open our lives to grace. Let us allow God, through Jesus, to transform our lives so that we might love ourselves more; love those around us more; and open our hearts to all those who God loves:“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.”David
