Dear friends,

Just imagine the scene...

You're sitting comfortably at home and there's a knock at the door.  You decide to ignore it.  The person continues to knock for a very long time until you can't ignore it any longer, so you go and answer the door.  You discover it's not who you thought it was so you let this person in and they sit down in your lounge.  After a few words, reasonably amicably exchanged, you go off on the pretext of making a cup of coffee.  In fact you do put the kettle on but then you decide to go off and do something else instead.  As it happens you get sidetracked.  The phone rings and after a long and happy call with a friend you discover a cheque that needed signing and posting so you quickly pop it into the envelope and nip out to put it into the post box.  When you get back into the house you go into the kitchen and make the coffee but get waylaid by a rather interesting book that you left on the kitchen table the other day, with the intention of reading it over breakfast.  A few hours later you go back into the lounge and discover your friend still sitting there, waiting for you, a smile on his (or her) face and getting rather thirsty!

Can you imagine doing anything like that?  Can you imagine having a friend who would simply sit and wait for all that length of time without coming to find where or even how you were?  Of course not.  But sometimes that's what it can be like with God.

He knocks on the door of our heart.  Maybe we ignore him.  We don't want to get involved, we don't want the commitment, we don't want to be told that we could actually improve our lives... just in case it's true!  But God is persistent and eventually we have to respond to his insistent knocking on the door of our hearts.  When we let God into our lives we actually can discover that he is not the person we thought he was.  Whatever image or idea we have held about God, because of our upbringing or for whatever other reasons, there is always more to discover about God than we can possibly ever know.

But sadly, how often we ignore God.  Rather like sitting a friend down in a comfy chair and thinking that's all we have to do, we allow God in and on his first visit we pigeon-hole him where we know we can find him when we want, but where we can ignore him the rest of the time (rather like having a spare tyre in the boot of the car!).

This is no way to treat God!  But, like our friend in the scenario above, God will always be waiting for us whenever we turn to him.  He will always have a smile on his face as he sees us for what we are - his children.  He will always be thirsty for our love.  And the arms that were nailed to a cross one bitter Friday, all those years ago, we'll find are extended in resurrection triumph and in welcome to us all.

Before and after Easter God walked with his friends in the person of Jesus Christ, his Son.  Now today he still walks with us and calls us his friends... Happy Easter! 

Best wishes to you all,