Always Hope

The image I posted on Good Friday has filled my mind these last few days of Lent. The cross looms large over the whole Gospel story, as we follow the Son of Man who came to give his life as a ransom for many. And if we really want to follow him, the first thing he says is "take up your cross". In a sermon on Palm Sunday (it's on our church website if you are very keen) I reflected that Jesus calls us to follow him and die. I was struck by this blog post from Joseph Black, and his reflection on success: Western Christianity has no category for martyrdom. We are so oriented towards and seduced by our host culture’s worship of success that persecution and martyrdom would seem the opposite of achieving God’s ‘blessing’ on our ministries and on our lives. This is such a profound challenge that I haven't been able to walk away from it. What does it mean, and what would it mean, to lose our lives for Jesus? Then last night, in a moment of confirmation or serendipity, I foun...

Thanks to Stuart at echurch Blog for drawing attention to Stephen Smith's list of what Twitterers gave up for Lent . Stephen, with techie skills beyond the comprehension of mere mortals, trawled Twitter between March 7 th and 10 th , aggregating all the tweets that referenced "giving up for Lent" and came up with a ranked list (as apparently he does every year). Here's the top 10 (with the number of occurences in brackets): 1. Twitter (4297) 2. Facebook (4060) 3. Chocolate (3185) 4. Swearing (2527) 5. Alcohol (2347)  6. Sex (2093) 7. Soda (1959) 8. Lent (1493) 9. Meat (1352) 10. Fast food (1303) There's serious intent here, but also sarcasm ("religion" also ranks at 14), and humour (147 people went for "lint"). Click on the link to see the top 100, and see what you think. But my reaction to this is more like a bronze age tribesman gazing at the stars and feeling very small. We post things on Twitter and the like and imagine t...