I don't know who you are

I don’t know anything about you. I do know that you’re reading this, but I don’t know who you are. I don’t know whether I know you or not. I don’t know where you live. I don’t know if you believe in God. Do you?

You don’t have to tell me, but you do know the answer to that question. If you do believe, then I’ll talk to you in a moment. If you would tell me that you don’t, then I always wonder why not. The evidence is all here in front of us: you exist, so do your family and friends, the trees in the fields and parks nearby, the clouds and the sun and moon and stars. Maybe all of your atoms came together through some random process that started in a big bang which created time, space and all the matter and energy in the universe, followed by an evolutionary process. But as well as that being highly unlikely statistically speaking, life seems to be much more than the sum of its parts.

Even more though, we all know that there is something inside of us that wants to communicate with whoever made all this. We can close our minds and tell ourselves that we are the result of chance physical, chemical and biological processes and that life is meaningless. Yet, somehow we know that it isn’t – there seems to be meaning and purpose all around us. Where hope is missing, it is generally because human society has squashed it; by default life springs up and flourishes. During the UK lockdown earlier this year, large numbers of people who had never thought about God much before, if at all, admit that they have started to pray.

So to bring everyone back on board, yes, praying is something that we can all do. For those of us who know Jesus, it is just talking to God as a friend. If you don’t know him, then he still hears and will answer if you are talking to him sincerely. God is powerful to change lives. Lockdown has been hard in various ways, but there are many, many stories of how people have come to know God during this period, how he has healed others, and supported yet more in various practical and personal ways. The same can be true for all of us.

The original article was first published in the Gosberton, Quadring, Gosberton Clough and Gosberton Risegate Community Magazine, November 2020 to January 2021