This morning, our pastor - preaching on the subject of apathy and apathetic faith - told us a very poignant true story. A man who for 10 years had been part of a car pool with three other men, was stricken with terminal cancer and given just a few weeks to live. His wife asked if he would like her to invite one of his car pool partners to visit him as that person was a church-going Christian and might be able to offer him some words of comfort. The man quietly declined the offer, saying: "If in 10 years of travelling back and forth to work with me he never once thought to share his faith with me, I doubt if he can say anything to help me now."

Although I haven’t done so, I was thinking of contributing to the recent thread on Favourites, and perhaps I might have chosen that poem by G.A. Studdert-Kennedy (which I hope you’ll allow me to quote since I find it so appropriate to the incident above)

When Jesus came to Golgotha, they hanged him on a tree, They drove great nails through hands and feet, and made a Calvary;

They crowned him with a crown of thorns, red were his wounds and deep, For those were cold and cruel days, and human flesh was cheap.

When Jesus came to Birmingham [1], they simply passed him by, They never hurt a hair of him they only let him die. For men had grown more tender and they would not give him pain, They only just passed down the street and left him in the rain.

Still Jesus cried "Forgive them, for they know not what they do." And still it rained, the winter rain that drenched him through and through;

The crowd went home and left the streets without a soul to see ...

And Jesus crouched against a wall and cried for Calvary.

[1] Or "Ottawa" or ...

Cheers!

Charles