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Radio 4,2 mins

Good Friday. Bishop James Jones - 10/04/2020

Thought for the Day

Available for over a year

Good Morning. On Desert Island Discs last month Daniel Radcliffe chose a song by Nick Cave, 鈥淚nto my arms, Oh Lord鈥. A love song, it begins with the sonorous line 鈥淚 don鈥檛 believe in an interventionist God but I know, Darling, that you do鈥. That division of belief goes to the heart of the spiritual response to our current crisis of health and wealth. Some feel there鈥檚 no point to asking God for help. 鈥淲hat will be will be鈥. Others will be on our knees begging God to protect our loved ones and to vanquish the virus. The Christian faith was born out of a belief in an interventionist God 鈥 that the One who made the world would rescue it out of the mire of so much that was now bad. Although today 鈥 Good Friday 鈥 feeds this belief it also fuels disbelief. The cry of Jesus from the cross, 鈥淢y God, why have you forsaken me?鈥 looks like evidence for those who doubt that God has either the will or the power to intervene. If he couldn鈥檛 rescue his own child what hope is there for us? Later on in Nick Cave鈥檚 song he concedes, 鈥楤ut I believe in Love and I know that you do too.鈥 Beneath any arguments about whether or not God intervenes there seems to be a universal conviction about the primacy of love. It鈥檚 shared by people of all faiths and of none. Kind signs of it are now spreading to surprising places like seeds in the wind blown by the storm of the virus. Like many people I鈥檝e prayed to God in difficult times. Last summer our six year old grandson had a tumour removed from his brain and is now undergoing twelve months of therapy. And yes, we are praying for God to intervene. At such a time philosophical arguments evaporate in the heat of love 鈥 love for him, for his family and in the hope that God too loves him with all his heart. That鈥檚 the love that we cling to in such a crisis. It鈥檚 the same love that energised the life of Jesus. At the end of Good Friday after the questioning and the thirsting, after the giving and forgiving, after the promise of paradise and the struggling for breath, and just before he declared that it was 鈥榝inished鈥 Jesus sighed, 鈥淚nto your hands, Oh Lord, I commend my spirit鈥. Into your arms. It was his last testament to Love which in our present crisis is our best hope.

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