C is for CHURCH

My childhood church building stood on the top of a hill or drumlin, surveying the whole countryside around, a landmark in the area. The building was constructed just before the beginning of the nineteenth century, though the congregation had already been meeting at the site in the original house since the early seventeen hundreds. There are two plaques on the outer walls, one at the front entrance which signifies the start of worship on the hill in 1704 and another on a side wall above a window informing all that the house was rebuilt in 1791. This is indeed proof that an earlier building preceded the present one. Like many Presbyterian churches of the time it was a plain building, with a central pulpit, pews, no ceiling and a mud floor and could have held up to five hundred people though the attendance was rarely more than a fifth of that. Still standing at one end is a chimney stack that peeks above the far gable wall and is a sign of an earlier heating system, no doubt.

By the time, it had become my place of worship, the mud floor, was no more and a mixture of shiny tiles and red carpet, up the aisles and at the front, lay beneath our feet. The main body of the building was filled with box pews, varnished in a light brown shade and each with its own door and little fastener to keep it closed during the service. There were three rows of these pews from the back to the communion table with the three pews furthest from the front sitting about a foot higher than the rest. At the front on each side of the central pulpit were about six or seven more boxes, at right angles to the rest, though these only tended to be occupied during harvest, an Orange service or when a mission came to town. The pulpit itself was also a box affair with a little door / gate on the right side and reached by a series of three or four steps and directly underneath sat the choir, sometimes facing the congregation and other times facing the pulpit but sandwiched between it and the organ. The whole building has faced several renovations, most notably in the early seventies when a choir room and minister's room were added and the box pews had to be discarded because of woodworm infestations and, more recently, a total makeover inside and the addition of a new front porch and a vestibule renovation. I remember when I was just a nipper, our box was in the middle aisle about five or six rows from the back. Dad always sat at the door end and sister and I, until we were old enough to join mum in the choir, sat inside. It was the custom that after the offering, the organist would simply keep playing, dad would open the door and we would march out into the aisle and off to children's church. ON one particular Sunday, sure enough, dad opened the door and I marched out into the aisle, only to find myself all alone and then realised that he was up to his usual tricks for the broad grin across his face said it all. As they say, I had been 'well had'.

Two other church buildings have been my home. Before I was ten, we spent several years in another Presbyterian 'meeting house' which was an altogether more recent building in the grand scale of things and where the open pews and the electric organ gave it a more modern feel. For the last half a dozen years, our spiritual home has been Richhill Methodist, a quaint little church that only holds about one hundred and fifty people on a good day and, almost every Sunday, has to. Inside, the decor is traditional with two rows of dark wooden pews sandwiching a narrow central aisle leading to a slightly raised platform on which stands a communion rail and a pulpit. But looks can deceive, for this is anything but a traditional gathering on a Sunday morning. And of course that is the whole thrust of my writing, for up until now I have only talked about the church as most people see it, namely a building where people meet to worship. But when Jesus first called Simon by his new name, he said 'I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome.' he wasn't talking about any building being erected but about a body of believers that would for ever be known as 'the church.'

As Christians, we all have different ways in which we worship God within and between our denominations, from the traditional days of my youth to the less traditional approach of our present fellowship, but we are all part of God's church and no building could ever hold all those who believe in Jesus as our Saviour and Lord.

It has been my privilege to have visited so many different church buildings and to marvel at their grandeur or their simplicity but it is a greater privilege to know personally the God in whose name such structures have been erected and who is the foundation stone of the greatest church ever built. Tell me, to which church group do you belong?

C is for CRICKET

Two of my uncles were the first real live cricketers whom I knew in the flesh. They were both avid sportsmen, playing hockey and rugby during the winter and swapping their sticks and studs for willow in the warmer months. When I visited my grandparents in Belfast, there was always a little umbrella stand sitting in the hallway that a collection of sticks and bats and usually a few cricket and hockey balls as well. Sometimes we would go out on to the long lawn at the front of the house and have a couple of overs but most of the holidays, my uncles were at work so it was a case of bowling and batting to yourself and make up the rest in your imagination.

At home, we had no such luxuries as a real cricket bat, but we did manage to get hold of a large piece of wood about the thickness and length of the real thing and after a bit of careful sawing, produced a home made bat that did the job adequately, though the occasional splinter from the handle end was much more painful than any bouncer that could be delivered. We set up one wicket at the pebble dashed gable end of the house and this amounted to an old apple box turned on its end with three boards facing the bowler to represent the three stumps and less than the regulation twenty two yards away, placed another apple box at a convenient line break in the concrete. Dad bowled with all the venom of a West Indian Lance Gibbs at the height of his power and sometimes it was difficult as a twelve year old to last a whole over before he was put in to bat. And we had some simple rules to make the game more interesting. First, and I'm sure dad made this one up. you were only allowed to hit the ball back in the direction of the bowler. Also if the ball rolled down to touch one of the sheds it was counted as four but if it hit a shed without bouncing it was a six. Also if the ball came off your bat on to the gable wall behind it was counted as a catch by the wicket keeper. The most annoying thing about the game was that the rule about hitting the ball back towards the bowler didn't apply when dad was batting and also, regularly, he launched an impressive strike for a six which soared over the top of the sheds and into the paddock behind that was packed full of four foot high nettles. Many a tennis ball we lost for some time during the playing season, only retrieving them after the winter had taken away the sting of the weeds. When dad wasn't there, I would turn the apple box around to face the wall, throw the ball at gable and hit it on the rebound. This was fine except the ball never came back with the same speed and often the uneven dash of the wall meant it often returned to any place except towards the wicket, but it did the job. And to practise the bowling I would often set other obstacles, such as an old bucket, in front of the wicket and place the bat in it just to make it more interesting. In this way, I won many test matches as Jon Snow, Derek Underwood, Geoff Boycott or John Edrich.


When I eventually got to play the real thing in school, it was a whole different experience, for the ball hurt and the feeling of willow against this hard sphere was very different to the impact a tennis ball made. Still, I chose to play it for a few years since the alternative was athletics and my short legs had already decided my fate in that area. So on many Wednesday afternoons, I trundled down to the nets or up to the crease and endured a couple of hours with a group of guys who essentially didn't play any sport and for which cricket was the least of all evils and certainly the least strenuous, while almost all my mates from the rugby team were running, jumping or throwing down on the main pitch. At one stage I got so fed up with it that I chose tennis for a summer term, but generally, it was the comradeship which I missed more than anything.


No, cricket was never going to be my thing and although I dabbled in it from time to time and still enjoy watching the game, especially the one day stuff, and take slightly more than a passive interest in the test series, I suppose it's not at the top of my sporting list anymore. There was a time when I knew every English, West Indian, Pakistan, Indian, Australian and New Zealand player and followed almost every county in England during the summer. Now I couldn't even name half of the present England team, but sometimes I don't think that's too different to the selectors anyway!


In order to preach the gospel of cricket to the unconverted, those who make decisions on such things have tried to make it more interesting, with World Cups, limited over games, one day matches, floodlit pitches and white balls, cameras in the stumps and coloured skips instead of the regulation whites but two things they haven't tampered with are the basic rules of the game and also that the object is to get your opponent out. I think therein lies a lesson to all of us who would profess to follow Jesus and His teachings as the basis for our faith. Ever since He walked on earth the way to heaven has not changed. Yes we can dress up the presentation, use new worship songs or drama and try to make a more attractive package for those still unconverted but at the end of the day, when everything is stripped away, there is still only one way back to God and that is through His Son. He said, 'I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.' And when we make that decision to follow Him, Satan constantly tries to catch us out for that is His whole reason for being, to dishonour God and to take us away from Him.


There are many ways to be out in cricket and similarly Satan has many plans to get us out of God's grasp. How refreshing to know that Jesus says ' I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no-one can snatch them out of my hand.' But that will never stop Satan trying, so remember, the next time you hit him for six, there'll be another test just around the corner!

C is for COMPUTER

I knew immediately that there was a problem. I had been warned that if it occurred, it was probably the worst thing that could happen. Everything had looked perfectly normal the night before but this particular morning, when I switched on the power, all I could see was the dreaded blue screen. Not the normal light blue colour that sometimes you might associate with a desktop but a deep blue accompanied with a message that I didn’t want to read and telling me what I didn’t want to know. My computer was knackered.The first time it happened, I didn’t know what to do, but I knew it was bad news and even though, after a series of phone calls and help from friends, I managed to get the thing going again, it was never the same and it didn’t live happily ever after. Indeed I found myself filled with an air of trepidation every time I turned it on, hoping that the blue screen wouldn’t reappear but unfortunately. From time to time, it did and I was again left floundering as to what to do. It’s funny, but it almost always seems to happen in the middle of a big project. A few years ago, I was editing film for a DVD of my son’s school rugby team when the screen turned blue, then last Christmas all my PowerPoint presentations and slide shows for the school play suffered the same fate, only three days before the opening night and the final straw came just less than a year ago, when the dreaded colour returned to haunt me just as we started to record youngest son’s first album of songs. Now I know part of the problem is my fault because, like most people, I try to push the computer to work too hard and to try and do things that it just wasn’t made to do. Whether it’s too little ROM or lack of RAM or the processor’s too slow or the software has some bugs or I’m just too impatient or a virus has crept in, but generally it’s usually partly my fault for the way I treat it. So last year, in the midst of my gloom, I went and bought an all singing-all dancing computer with lots of RAM, a huge hard drive, an external hard drive and a very fast processor and made a vow to myself that I would look after it, which, almost a year later, I have managed to do. Now it is only used for selected jobs, such as audio and video recording and will not, I repeat, will not be connected to the internet.My old computer was reformatted by a friend and has worked fine ever since but it’s purely my internet browser and of course, my blog interface.

I remember, somewhere in the early eighties there was a little computer called the Sinclair ZX Spectrum that you could plug into your television and mainly use for playing games and the first computer that arrived in the school where I taught at the time consisted of a huge black box and a monitor, that had a green display. There was a disc drive that took very floppy discs which were slightly larger than CD cases, but no mouse, so all instructions had to be typed in. This was followed by BBC computers, that also accepted the oversized discs, had a cream coloured keyboard and a very cube like monitor which displayed white type on a black screen. At least this was a step forward, for coloured programs became available and added some interest rather than just typing in numbers and letters, but it was still pretty basic. Imagine our delight then when Apple produced their first computer that actually worked using a mouse. It was the size of a medium hi-fi speaker and had the screen built in. Now you could type on the screen without having to go through a whole set of instructions and print your work out. When I moved schools, I bought an Applemac and for the next seven or eight years it did everything asked it to do and never broke down once, but it’s memory was so small that I knew sooner or later, a change was inevitable. Strangely, around the same time, we also bought some in Applemacs in school and even more strangely, I still use one of them every day, fifteen years later, for simple word processing and making my class notes and they just don’t give problems.So what did we do before computers came along? I guess we had to write everything down or use a bulky typewriter, had to listen to music on CD players, send films off for developing, keep accounts in books, view photos in albums, visit banks and travel agents, send letters and actually wait for news on the radio or television. Yes, computers have changed our lives and you wonder how you did without them sometimes.

When Jesus came into the world as a baby, He came with one mission and that was to change our spiritual lives and the way we approached God for ever. The Old Testament is filled with examples of laws, rituals and sacrifices that the people were required to comply with in order to worship their God and seek repentance. Jesus did away with all of that when he died and rose again for He had become the only sacrifice for our sins that was needed and now we can approach our God through His Son and once again call Him Father. Remember that famous verse in Corinthians 'Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.' Once you experience the joy He brings to your life, there is no going back for He gives us grace to live each day. My latest computer is already out of date, such are the advances in technology and will probably stop working some of these days. However it's satisfying to know that the God who existed long before the microchip never lets me down and is all I need for the future. Process that!

C is for COLLECTION

Mum used to cover the doors of her kitchen cupboards with postcards, few of which, if indeed any, had been sent to her through the post. She would collect them when she went to a seaside resort for a day or when she was on one of her several holidays to Scotland with dad. And they were all very similar, usually portraying a scene from a bygone age and invariably including animals somewhere in the picture. There were plenty of shots of dogs, sheep, donkeys and cattle and little reminisces of rural Ireland over the past sixty or so years, with old signposts, isolated phone boxes, senior citizens perching on stone walls or near gates and the occasional antique tractor or car just zooming into view. I guess they reminded her of times she knew well and didn’t want to forget and when we went off to the coast, we usually ended up in a gift shop, looking to add to her collection. Usually, the only problem was trying to choose a scene that she was not already displaying on one of her doors, so sometimes there was the odd duplicate occupying a free space.

I wasn’t averse to collecting things myself, probably beginning with football cards that came with a small piece of pink, flat chewing gum which had a slightly fruity taste and was, theoretically, bubble gum. I never cared much for the stuff for it was as hard as a piece of cardboard and took tremendous effort to mould into any other shape without it breaking into a hundred tiny pieces inside your mouth. Anyway, I had a fair collection of cards, built up from too many visits to the sweetie shop across the road from school and also from the swaps with other kids in my class. Time doesn’t seem to have changed much for there are several boys in my present primary school class who are still collecting football cards, except the whole presentation and accompanying folder are much more sophisticated and there is now no chewing gum. How lucky are they!

Around the same time, I also began to take an interest in stamp collecting. It seemed to be all the rage and I remember my sister and I each had a album which contained stamps from relatives in USA and Canada and also an assortment of local stamps commemorating certain events, like the 1966 World Cup. I even joined a stamp club, as some of you probably did also and received my magnifying glass, forceps, membership badge and certificate and a few packets of stamps from other countries around the world. After a while though, with a sizeable collection in my album, I found I got more of a kick from getting stamps through neighbours, friends and relatives rather than from an big company somewhere in England.So I took to collecting coins, in the beginning, mostly dollars and cents that my great uncle in California left after a visit home, but also old coppers and silver before we went decimal. I also collected a set of rare silver football coins that Esso used to give away with petrol, sometime prior to one of the World Cups. Each one had an England player engraved on it and the whole set, about twenty or so, sat neatly into a presentation folder that amounted to little more than a piece of very stiff cardboard with little circles cut out to hold each coin. I still collect coins but not in any structured way, but simply a couple of mugs full of metal discs that some of us brought home from other countries during holidays. For a while I also collected silly ties but that was probably just a growing phase, though wife reminds me that it was only a few years ago!

I suppose we have had similar collections in our house to those found elsewhere, namely CDs, DVDs, shoes, books, comics, shells, magazines and toys though I don’t think I’ll mention our cushion collection, which is now sitting at sixty eight and rising!The only collection that I have which has never changed over the years is the collection of books that make up the Bible. Though I may use a different translation from time to time, it still starts with Genesis and ends with Revelation and still contains the same great truths as it always did. And the great thing about it is that every book is there for a reason, from the creation, the birth of a nation, through the love story of Ruth and Boaz, the bravery and foolishness of David,the traumas of Job and the foresight of Elijah and other great prophets all preparing the way for the coming of the Messiah and the growth of His church through His disciples. It's not a collection that I ever grow weary of reading for there is always something new in its pages and something old that I have forgotten. And maybe it's time I started showing it to others. Jesus said 'But even more blessed are all who hear the word of God and put it into practice.' After all, what is the point of a collection if you can't share it!

C is for CASH

I remember, some time in the mid sixties, dad pulling up in his Morris Oxford outside the petrol pumps in Loughgall. It was a dark shade of blue with a cream coloured roof and had round headlights but pointed taillights. Both the front and back seats were like two big couches so it was easy to cram a third passenger into the front, in the days when seat belts were not only not compulsory but often didn’t exist. Anyway, once again I digress, for the thing I remember most about his visit to the petrol pumps was the cost of the petrol. Dad used to be able to get a gallon for about four pounds and ten shillings, which meant when he handed over his pound note to the shopkeeper, who actually came out to serve you, he got almost four and a half gallons for his money. That’s about twenty and a half litres and at today’s prices would work out somewhere in the region of just over twenty one pounds! My present car has a fuel capacity of about seventy litres so at dad’s prices I could have filled the tank for about three pound ten shillings compared to about seventy pounds now. Where did it all go wrong? Equally I remember mum buying Tayto crisps for an old threepenny bit or four for a shilling which was the equivalent of our present five pence piece. Now, four packets of crisps would set you back about one pound fifty at least.
The strange thing is, I don’t remember how they always managed to have ready cash for there was no such thing as a ‘hole in the wall’ into which you could slot a card and withdraw money. Come to think of it, there wasn’t even a card to start with. But no matter when you needed money, for dinners at school or some other activity, they always seemed to have some. I guess they were just very well organised and must have always made it to the Post Office or local bank for there was no other way to get money readily. I sometimes think how fortunate we are today that no matter when you need cash, you can usually find a machine somewhere close by that is willing to hand out some notes. Dad used to have a few really large notes that he kept hidden somewhere in the house though I never knew where. They were pretty old too and hadn’t seen the light of day for some considerable time. I remember once that he gave me this red one hundred pound note which was much larger in size than the notes I was used to seeing and sent me off to pay a house bill at the bank. Imagine the look on the face of the teller who, like myself, had never come across such an extraordinary looking note. It took time and a few conversations behind the counter before he accepted that it was genuine and shortly after that experience, dad decided to cash in the remaining big red ones just in case the same problem arose again. I didn’t ask any questions!

But now I begin to wonder is cash beginning to go out of fashion. Certainly for larger items and in many stores, cheques are no longer acceptable and most people I see, pay with a credit or debit card with cash only appearing for those who choose to buy ‘odds and ends’. More and more people complete their banking online and I’m sure there are those who rarely visit the bank on the high street any more, preferring to do their business by telephone, post or the computer where the figures in our accounts are only numbers and you never see the real notes that were so much a part of our parents’ lives. Of course having to depend on cash and visiting the bank on a regular basis had its advantages, especially because you were rarely tempted to live beyond your means for it’s less painful to sign a piece of paper or punch in a card number than it is to give away money notes. Also you got to know the bank staff and the manager and, more importantly, he knew you and valued your custom in a much more personal way than we see today. I guess that’s why, even though they may have had less than we have, they were always relatively happy with life.

Jesus tells us, in Matthew’s Gospel, ‘Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal.’ I can’t pay my way to heaven, even with a credit card but I can be assured of getting there without even opening my wallet. In these days, where many churches put great value on wealth in tandem with our relationship to God. But the real richness of life with Him is to be found in His grace towards us and as Paul says in his letter to the Philippians, ‘My God will meet all your needs according to his glorious riches in Christ Jesus.’
May you also find your riches not in cash, cheques or cards but in the love of Jesus who has already paid the one price for all our debts over two thousand years ago and it still costs us exactly the same. No charge.

C is for CUSHIONS

I hate cushions. At the last count, we had sixty seven of the wretched things in our house. This doesn't include the ones that have been recently replaced and disappeared from public view but are lurking somewhere on the premises. Based on the fact that my survey involved nine rooms, that's an average of almost seven and a half cushions per room. Is this excessive?

Five of the cushions, one very large and four medium sized, adorn the marital bed when it is not occupied. This must be a woman thing, me thinks, for who else would take the time and energy to not only make a bed every morning but also complete an artistic arrangement of cushions near the bed head. At night, sufficient more energy is expended in removing them to the floor where they then present a sizeable obstacle for any person, attempting to circumnavigate to the far side of the bed in the dark. The problem is compounded by the presence of a large, soft puppy, which returned from one of our holidays and though it requires no feeding nor makes any noise, I think I heard it snigger once or twice when I fell headlong over the impromptu barricade of material on my nightly journey to sleep.

And the problems don't end there. It is impossible to book a seat in the living room as a mixture of black leather, petrol blue and beige cushions squat nightly on the settee, the reclining chair and the single seater. So most evenings we all just watch television together though sometimes I'm pretty sure they hide the remote when I'm at work. We have other seats in the house that were obviously never intended for human use at all, unless you wish to sit two feet higher in the air and also I've noticed lately that some of these dreaded cushions now occupy positions where there are no seats at all, like , for example, the tops of cabinets and dressing tables. To invite visitors to sit in our conservatory would be an embarrassment as the couch has at least five cushions that occupy the total seating area, even if they are arranged in a symmetrical picture and obviously pleasing on the eye.

So I ask myself, what is the point of a cushion? Did the furniture maker not construct a comfortable enough settee or chair, considering that they aren't cheap to buy? Is it only for decoration or is there a genuine concern for our well being and comfort during the long winter evenings. After all, the blessed things take up most of the space that we are meant to occupy and I'm sure I'm not the first person in history who ends up holding the cushion on my lap or tossing it onto the floor in front. I think the answer lies in the fact that my wife suffers from cushion addiction. This may not be as serious or indeed life threatening as some of our modern vices but it is, nevertheless, a condition that needs urgent help! Such is her love for these pillow-like bundles that, for many years, she has taken to making her own cushions and just the other day, I heard her whisper to herself, in a shop, that she had found a lovely bit of material that would make at least another two or three. I managed to divert her thoughts long enough, by convincing her that she could probably buy them for less than the price of the material and quickly ushered her towards the exit. Even when we enter a furniture warehouse, her gaze always seems directed towards the soft padded structures lying around rather than the chairs, tables and sofas.Now I find myself encouraging her to visit clothes and shoe shops rather than fabric and furnishing stores, in the vain hope that it is not too late to cure her addiction, but occasionally I still catch her smuggling one or two soft padded objects into the house under the cover of the grocery bags.

I've thought of sending her to 'Cushions Anonymous' or making her sit in a room with only a wooden table and chairs but I fear this might be too drastic action and anyway she's likely just to take off her cardigan and fold it into the shape of a cushion. Is help at hand? I'd like to meet the person who gave her that first cushion and her friends are no help either for one of them bought her a cushion for Christmas. Doesn't she realise the damage it's doing to the inside of her house? OK, I'm joking, really, I don't mind cushions at all and I do see the artistic side of someone who can arrange such objects in a tasteful and symmetrical manner and choose colours that match in with the general decor of a room, while providing a greater degree of comfort, even if us menfolk would prefer just to pitch them all in the middle of the floor.

God's love is like a cushion surrounding me. The Psalmist writes in chapter 119 'May your unfailing love be my comfort.' But there are those who want to throw that comfort away to make more room for themselves. They have no place for God nor His love and then they wonder what has gone wrong in their lives. Through His love, He comforts us in our sadness, in our loss, when we mourn and when we are in the valley. But He also comforts us in our good times, provides a place of rest for us and His love encourages us to return daily to Him for more. Why else would the Psalmist write in that oh so famous chapter 23, 'He makes me lie down in green pastures,He leads me beside quiet waters,He restores my soul.' Paul refers to Him as 'the God of all comfort' and One 'who comforts us in our troubles' and I know He has sent His Holy Spirit, the Comforter, to live within us when we believe.

One night, as a storm raged on Galilee, Jesus found comfort as He slept below deck on a cushion or pillow, before rising to calm the storm and bring comfort to His disciples. Where do you find comfort during your own personal storms?

C is for CONFLICT

The trouble with conflict is that everyone thinks they're right. And this belief, however misguided, becomes the rule of thumb by which they live their life and also the manner in which they respond to their opponent. It was brought home to me forcibly last night as I watched yet another programme on 'The Troubles', that unfortunate and rather nondescript title which makes some attempt to define the problems that beset our province for so many years of our adolescence and beyond.

I suppose, like everyone else who lived though those years, before I even view such a programme, I am already suspicious about it, ready to look for any hint of the producers taking sides in the argument. Last night was no different. Immediately I found myself trying to be supportive and positive about the comments from one side of the barricades while treating the other side's remarks with cynicism and disbelief. Yet, in trying to be neutral in my watching, I was amazed at how both sides felt completely justified by their actions and, if not disrespectful to their opponents, at least indifferent to their situation. But this was a world that we were getting used to in the late sixties and early seventies, a world of barricades, of stones, of rubber and plastic bullets, of water canons, of burning buses. A world of conflict right on our doorstep, first in black and white but soon coming in full colour to a town, village or countryside much closer to home.

They said we needed to talk to each other to resolve the conflict, but thirty years of watching hatred, venom and disregard pour out of the mouths of ordinary, everyday people on television talk programmes, where the wounds inflicted were often much deeper and harder to heal than those caused by sticks and stones, didn't fill any of us with confidence. And when the petrol bombs became real bombs and the stones turned to bullets, we all knew that the talking hadn't helped. But at least our vocabulary was widening with talk of civil rights, genocide, no go areas, victims, H blocks, balaclavas, provisionals, snipers, concerned residents, traditional routes, triumphalism, ambushes and the reality of the situation! Like I say, in conflict, everyone thinks that they're right. It's really hard to change that mindset but it's really easy to justify any action. Was it a war between Protestants and Catholics, between the unemployed and the well off, between those who felt Irish and those who claimed Britishness, a war based on inequality, a war over land or possessions or a war between two completely different cultures. I don't really know but I guess there's a bit of all of those and a touch more of some than others.

Anyway we've come out the other side, at least part of the way and in the long process of normalising the country the apparent need to talk has again arisen. They call it conflict resolution. But even as I watch up to date programmes which allow people to reminisce about certain aspects of The Troubles, I'm worried that despite our need to resolve the conflict completely, all these years later we all still believe we were right. Is that progress? Probably, but with a small p. At least, if we still feel hatred, experience had taught us to hide it more discreetly.

So how does Jesus tells us to deal with conflict? Doesn't He say in Matthew 5 to 'Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you' and in Luke 6, 'Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you.' Also in the same chapter, HE says 'If someone strikes you on one cheek, turn to him the other also.' So He wants us to show love, pray for and do good to our enemies and also not to retaliate. I wonder how many of our human responses during the last thirty years, mirrored His commands? If we want to be more like our Heavenly Father, somewhere along the line we have to be in obedience to Him rather than to our human desires and wishes. Paul hits the nail on the head when he writes, 'For the sinful nature desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the sinful nature. They are in conflict with each other, so that you do not do what you want.'

The conflict in our country, in our world, is only a reflection of the ongoing conflict in our hearts.
May God give us the grace to resolve it, starting with an outpouring of His love from ourselves to all men. The trouble with God's answer to conflict is that He is right.