Reflection for the month - June

 Where do we go from here?
Can you begin to imagine the anguish and the desolation felt by Jesus’ followers when He was taken from them and crucified? Their Lord, their Master, their Messiah – the Messiah, dead, dead like their hopes, dead like their faith in Him. Just three days later they were overjoyed at the knowledge of His resurrection. He was with them once more, but only for forty days before he went away again.

He left them with firm instructions, and with a promised gift of the Holy Spirit which would complete their understanding and inspire them to fulfil His commands.  “Where do we go from here?” they would have been wondering for those few days when, fearful of what might await them outside of their hiding place, they waited anxiously for that promised Spirit.

When the Holy Sprit did come their doubts about “What now” were totally dispelled. They strode out boldly to preach the message of God’s Kingdom, a kingdom of love, of mercy and of justice. From that day, from that place the message spread across the world. We, today, need not ask “Where do we go from here?”, the journey is well laid out, and step by step it is for us to love, to be merciful and to counter injustice wherever we find it. The words of the Lord’s prayer, ‘Thy Kingdom come,’ place on us the duty to play our part in bringing it about.
                                                                                                 David Peacock