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Good Morning,

Jesus landed on my doormat this week. I found him lying there amongst the direct mail. His visage gazing up from the floor from between the pizza delivery leaflet and a card for a taxi service. A message from another world lying amongst the junk mail.

It was a postcard from a friend who had been travelling in Italy. Sending postcards? Travel abroad? I’d almost forgotten such things happened. The postcard transported me back to a time when people sent postcards and went travelling without restrictions.

‘Wish you were here,’ it said, in so many words. ‘Here’ being the town of Cefalu, in Sicily, and the cathedral that contains the most spectacular mosaic of Christ Pantocrator – The Cosmic Christ, Sustainer of the World.

I had seen the real thing myself once. Back when the world was our oyster. Before it shut like a clam. After a day of innocent, unthinking ambling we had entered that cathedral and been confronted with a spectacular image. Craning our necks to look up in wonder at a wonder of the world.

And for a moment I wished I was there again. I might have looked more closely. As closely as I was looking at the postcard from my friend whose journey I now vicariously enjoyed. Their words were full of the same excitement I had felt then: ‘It is more wonderful than I imaged’ they said. Before adding that the postcard didn’t do the real thing justice.

Maybe not. But it was enough. For a few minutes, I was there. In front of the majestic blue and gold, thousand-year old Christ, that had survived earthquake fire and plague, and continued to look over and through us, as if to say: ‘Fear not. I’ve got this’.

Postcard Jesus suddenly opened up a portal to memory and experience. Of travel to other places. That powerful desire to share something beautiful. Of other postcards sent home – telling of the world’s wonders. Perhaps, in these days, whilst we are unable to go where we please, we must dig in to our banks of memory and recall the good things we have seen and experienced; as the Apostle Paul says, dwell on all that is lovely. We should remember the beauty that we have taken in, or taken for granted. The freedom, the cultures, the people we have met. The treasures discovered in unexpected places.

In the Bible, the book of Hebrews says that ‘in these last days God has spoken to us by his Son,
who is the radiance of God’s glory. The exact representation of his being. Sustaining all things by his powerful word.’ This is the Christ that’s depicted in the postcard. The all-will-be-well, everything-in-its-right-place, Jesus. The one to whom, if I said I wish you were here, might reply ‘I am here. I have always been here. And always will be.’

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