In Ireland we are sometimes blessed with a Spring morning which is idyllic! The scents and sounds are stimulating and there is a real sense of it being good to be alive. The grass, after a cold April, now bursts into that vivid luscious green that has the cattle lying down to ruminate after only one circuit of the field. Spring flowers border the country roads and the new motorways with their young plantations of trees display that fresh leafy green that sooths the eye and sweetens the landscape. It is good to rejoice in creation and recognise that even in a fallen world evidence of the Creator is plain to be seen for those who have eyes to see. Of course such musings do not make news! Newspapers are sold by highlighting our wrongs! When the Times of London conducted correspondence into what was wrong with the world, G K Chesterton replied, in what is arguably the briefest letter ever printed; “Dear Sir, I am. Yours faithfully GKC. He realised that we are part of the problem. This was starkly illustrated for us last week by the people of the Amstetten, Austria, as they tried to come to terms with the enormity of the evil which had dwelt amongst them for the last 24 years. Locked in the basement of her father’s house from the age of 18, Elizabeth produced 7 babies in horrendous conditions and only saw the light of day when the eldest had to be hospitalised. After initially protesting that the whole nation could not be held responsible for the actions of one man the Austrian press began the painful process of self examination. “Many of these answers are slumbering deep in ourselves” wrote the Kurier in an editorial which tried to get beyond the veneer of respectability. The Bible puts its finger on it; “There is no-one righteous, not even one” writes St Paul in Romans Chapter 3. Sadly thorns grow in God’s garden and they are reproduced in us. Graphically they were placed on Jesus’s head on the cross illustrating our sins laid on him. For those who turn from their wrongdoing and trust completely in Jesus a fruitful life awaits. As the writer to Hebrews puts it; Therefore he is able to save completely those who come to God through him, because he always lives to intercede for them.
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