Life

There is a huge contrast today between the Martyrs of Sebaste - who in 320 stood out all night in the cold and allowed themselves basically to freeze to death rather than give up their beliefs and the official in John's Gospel who is far from ready to let go of life for his son.

Life is something which we have a strange relationship with - it is something which we both cling to as human beings and yet, curiously, reject in some ways as our definition as Christians. We are alive, we live but yet this mortality which threatens to define us is not all that we are, there is more. But that more is unseen and unexplained - a matter of faith, not sight. So, we walk a curious line between life and death, the known and the unknown, embracing and rejecting.

I sometimes think that the life of the secular Christian is the hardest of all - that life which is called to live in and embrace and encounter all that is the world and still, somehow, keep some separation from it. There is nothing wrong in the official wanting his son healed - just as there is nothing wrong in any of us wanting to maintain life with those we love.

I suppose what those martyrs remind us of is that there is another, eternal perspective. That is not to say we should all abandon today, but that we should be aware of tomorrow. And be aware that every day is a day for living in faith.