CHRISTIAN COMMENT: Approaching Easter

Tricky. OK, here’s another.

Why should an accidental discovery 84 years ago have any significant bearing on my life now?

Easier. That was Alexander Fleming discovering penicillin – I think.

If you can answer that (and a bit of Googling works wonders), then you can answer the first.

Well, think about it.

Dr Fleming found out that one kind of life-form (mould, no less) could kill off another. One that didn’t harm the human body could destroy one that did. And that’s still true today.

In the same way, one kind of inner life (a perfect specimen, if you like) could eradicate the damage being done by another kind. And that’s still true today.

Even at his trial, no-one could offer or refer to any bad thing that Jesus had done.

He’d annoyed a lot of people by saying that what they were doing was, first, not what God wanted and, second, positively harmful to those who lived that way.

But no-one could prove that what he said wasn’t true.

Anyway, the evidence suggested people who changed their thinking and followed Jesus’ advice, did get healed and released from all sorts of problems.

Their lives seem to have got straightened out.

He simply said: “I am the way (that everything works), I am the truth (whether anyone agrees or not) and I am the life (try anything else and you’ll die – one way or another).”

Huge claim.

He also said: “I have come to heal not people who think they’re well but those who know they’re sick.”

A dose of penicillin is effective whether we believe in it or not.

We’ll know we’ve been feeling really bad. And then better. But we may need someone to tell us just how sick we are and that penicillin is what’s needed.

Jesus wants to heal what’s inside – not our physical cell structure but our thoughts and feelings, what makes us, us.

If we don’t think there’s anything wrong with our lives, Jesus ‘well life’ won’t help us. We won’t ask for it in the first place.

That’s the tricky bit. We take a lot of convincing that how we are is fundamentally wrong somehow.

That’s getting a bit personal.

But Jesus said: “If your life is, in any way, stressed or leaving you dissatisfied; if you’re distracted by too many conflicting demands; if you’re just not happy with how you are, come to me. Have a piece of what I am!”

Feeling OK, are we?