A message from our Pastor:

My dear Friends,

Spring is coming at last! For me, this is the best time of the year not the least because Springtime also means Easter, the time when we can celebrate that most astonishing event, the Resurrection.

But for some of us it's not all that easy. We can cope with Jesus' teaching, even the miracles. The crucifixion, yes, we can deal with that as well - but the Resurrection? That's something else entirely and, to our rational minds, well nigh impossible. So it was for one of the disciples - poor old Thomas. He alone had not seen the risen Christ at Easter and without that positive proof he wasn't going to believe anything. I can empathise with him for it really was a `pigs might fly' situation - men do not rise from the dead just like that.

But as we know, the risen Lord did appear to Thomas a week later and the appearance wrung out of Thomas possibly the most sublime confession of faith to be found anywhere in the Bible. Read the story for yourself later in John 20:24ff.

Yet the interesting thing in this story is that Thomas, despite his unbelief, still kept company with that little community of faith and, importantly, they with him. By keeping him in their circle, they provided Thomas with that assurance and comfort that he needed at a very difficult time, a place where he could air his doubt and ultimately, in the company of his friends, find the answers that he sought.

As the Russian writer Dostoevsky said of his own struggle hundreds of years later, ' My faith was wrought in the crucible of doubt ` and so it was for Thomas and so it might be also for us. Faith, real faith, is not something that comes easily, especially as we hear the Easter story and learn of the Resurrection. Often we do need to fight our way through doubts and frequently, plain unbelief, and it is in such situations that we, as God's church, must be ready to welcome and encourage those who struggle. Our security, after all, is in One who will never cast us out and can use our doubts and disbelief, as He did with Thomas, as the soil to grow a deep and lasting faith. `Lord I believe, help my unbelief'. (Mark 9:24)

Lives again our glorious King:
Where 0 death is now thy sting?
Once He died our souls to save;
Where thy victory 0 grave?

Only Charles Wesley could have written that but he speaks for us all!

Geoffrey Griggs