Why is it 'Good News'?

We live in an age of spiritual ‘hunger’, but people seem unsure where to find spiritual ‘sustenance’. The first time one lady visited our church (her first ever visit to any church) she indicated to me afterwards that she was very interested in spiritual things, but never expected to find any ‘spiritual reality’ in a church! She expected to find ritual, tradition, ceremony, but it caught her completely unawares when she sensed (in her words) a divine presence.

The brilliant French philosopher and mathematician Blaise Pascal, once suggested that in every human being there is a ‘God-shaped void’. As long as it exists we are restless and incomplete. We try to fill it: money, power, position, career, even family are squeezed into the space. But none of these satisfy – the hole is God-shaped!

I meet a growing number of people who recognise within themselves a hunger, a longing to discover ‘something more’. Prince Charles once spoke for his belief that, “For all the advances of science, there remains deep in the soul a persistent and unconscious anxiety that something is missing, some ingredient that makes life worth living.” There must be something more! As a convinced atheist, Ernest Hemmingway lived without reference to God. He concluded: “Life is just a dirty trick, a short journey from nothingness to nothingness.” In contrast, the 4^th century theologian, Augustine, penned: “Our hearts are restless until they find their rest in Thee.”

This blog will hopefully be a simple series of reflections and questions attempting to explain the Christian faith in a clear and accessible manner. It works on the assumption that there is ‘something more’, which billions of people have discovered as they have encountered ‘God’ as described by the Christian faith. I Intend to investigate a trio of key dimensions in Christian experience: relating to God as a Father, making sense of Jesus Christ and discovering the dynamic power of the Holy Spirit.