Scammers beware!

admin 16/02/2020

Bridge Magazine, February 2020

Just after Christmas, a church member (let’s call her Brenda, though that isn’t her name) received an email claiming to be from me, asking her for a “favor” [sic].

Being a very kind lady, Brenda ignored the American spelling and offered to help, and was asked to go to Tesco and buy four £50 gift cards, take photos of the codes and PIN on the back, and email them, so that “I could give my niece a Christmas present.”

Thankfully Brenda wasn’t able to go through with it – and a relative realised something fishy was going on, and prevented her falling victim to a scam.

Subsequently, I’ve discovered several people in the Upton area have been contacted by email scammers pretending to be me, and so I thought that I’d write a slightly different type of article this month to draw attention to the situation, and hopefully reduce the likelihood of it happening again!

So here’s a quick guide to making life as tough as possible for the scammers!

1) Beware the common email scams!

“The Nigerian Scam” – a prince / pastor / politician needs your bank account details to get money out of a war-torn African country.
The “Can you do me a favor?” request email. This is very common in businesses and community groups eg churches.
Blackmail scams: Send money now to avoid arrest for unpaid taxes, or looking at illegal pornography.
Threat-based scams, eg, “Someone paid me to kill you”
The email Greetings card (don’t click the file, its probably got a virus in it)
Too good to be true scams, eg The lottery win, or that gorgeous-looking person who canted you through your internet dating site, who needs cash to come to the UK to meet you in person.
Phishing email scams – usually pretending to be from a bank.
“Your computer is infected, download this file now to fix it”
“I’ve lost my passport and need money to help me get back to the UK”

For an even longer list, visit this website. And remember they’re always coming up with something new, so be sceptical!

2) A spotters guide to scams.

Be suspicious of emails containing bad grammar, misspelt words, and Americanisms! A lot of scammers are based outside the UK and English may not be their first language!

Look at the email address. If the email claims to be from someone you know, make sure it’s the email address the person normally uses. If it isn’t, be suspicious!

Beware emails that attempt to move you to action by tugging on your hearts strings, making you feel guilty, or stupid.

Get a second opinion. Copy the first sentence of the email and the word SCAM into Google and see what Google finds. If that doesn’t reveal anything, also ask a friend or family member to look at the email for you. And if the email claims to be from a friend or your boss or the vicar, telephone them to double-check the details!

Finally, will the money you send be traceable? Are you paying into a recognised bank account, or is it something anonymous like Bitcoin or gift vouchers? I read about one scammer who pretended to be an Inland Revenue investigator chasing unpaid taxes. Amazingly, he asked to be paid in iTunes vouchers. Even more amazingly, people paid him!

3) Reporting a scam email.

If you receive an email that looks like it might be a scam:

Don’t reply to it.
Don’t click any links or open any attachments in it.
Do report it to the email company that was used to send you the email. (Nearly all email suppliers have a system allowing you to report scam emails. They can then close the email address down.)
If you’ve sent money to a scammer, it to the police via ActionFraud
If in doubt, call the Citizens Advice UK helpline: 0300 330 3003.

4) Where do scammers get names and email addresses from?

There are huge lists of email addresses and other personal details for sale in the darker corners of the internet. However, scams like the one Brenda nearly fell for, work best when sent to networks of people who know each other, eg businesses, community groups and churches. To get a list like that, scammers infect a computer with a virus that steals the person’s email address book. A quick search of the address book would reveal my title (Reverend), and they could then send the email to everyone in the address book in my name.

5) How can I prevent my data from being used like this?

The key is to keep your computer up to date. Microsoft no longer supports Windows Vista, XP or Windows 7, so if your computer uses these operating systems, you are vulnerable and really should consider updating it to Windows 10. It is still possible to do this for free, but if you’re unsure how to do it, it’s best to ask a knowledgeable friend or relative. The classified section of this magazine also has details of some local IT companies that can help with upgrades, and who can also help you out if you think your computer has a virus.

But even if you’re using Windows 10, you need to make sure your antivirus is running and up to date. That should happen automatically as Windows 10 has one built-in (it’s called Windows Defender), but it’s always best to check. To do this, type “Windows Security” into the search box in the bottom left-hand corner of your screen, and click on the Windows Security app link that appears. This will open a “Security at a glance” page, which will tell you if there are any problems that need attention.

Whilst there are several other things you can do to make your computer even more secure, installing Windows 10 and making sure your antivirus is running, is the best way to protect your data, and to protect your friends and family from being exploited by scammers.

Barry Unwin Jan 2020

Happy Valentine’s Day!

admin 14/02/2020

First published in the Bridge Magazine March 2019

How did your Valentine’s Day go? Chances are your February 14^th went a lot better than it did for the two men for whom the day is named.

Today’s consumer-driven Valentine’s Day festival traces its roots back to the 14^th century English poet Chaucer, whose poem the Parliament of Foules pictured all the birds meeting to choose their mates on St Valentine’s Day. But the day’s origins are older than Chaucer. It was the 5^th century Pope Gelesius I who made February 14^th St Valentine’s Day. He wanted to help people forget a banned Roman pagan festival called Lupercalia which was traditionally celebrated in mid-February. During Lupercalia, youths raced naked through the streets of Rome, striking women with bloody strips of flesh taken from the remains of goats and dogs sacrificed on the Lupercal Altar. This practice was thought to increase women’s fertility.

Instead Pope Gelesius introduced something altogether more wholesome: a day to honour two early Christian leaders, both called Valentine, who were martyred by Emperor Claudius II around 270AD.

One Valentine was a priest executed on February 14^th for defying an imperial order. In those days only single men could serve in the army, and facing a shortage of recruits, the emperor decided that banning marriage would increase the number of potential soldiers. When Valentine was caught secretly marrying couples, he was arrested, and Claudius had him clubbed to death in the street. You won’t find that image on the Valentine’s cards in Tesco.

The second Valentine was a Christian bishop from Terni. Arrested for preaching in the streets of Rome, he was placed in the custody of a judge called Asterius who decided to put Valentine’s God to the test. Bringing in his blind daughter, Asterius told Valentine he would convert to Christianity if God could heal the girl’s eyes. Valentine prayed and the daughter could see again, and three days later the judge and all his household were baptised. Asterius then released Valentine who returned to street preaching and was again arrested. From prison, Valentine wrote a letter to Asterius’s daughter signed, “From your Valentine”, so he’s the one to blame for all those pink cards!

Valentine was eventually brought before Emperor Claudius with whom he tried to engage in debate about Christianity. Claudius found the debate interesting but when it started going badly for him, he resolved things by executing Valentine. The date? February 14^th. Another Happy Valentine’s Day.

So, two Valentines, one who risked his life to defy an emperor, the other a missionary and champion of free religious speech. And both were killed on February 14^th, to give birth to our modern festival. Given a choice between “I love you” cards and striking ladies with strips of goat flesh, I think the Pope Gelesius got this one right!

From the Manifesto to the Manger

admin 18/12/2019

From the Manifesto to the Manger

Have the children in your life compiled their Christmas lists yet? One child I know has asked for a “reel (sic) gun to shoot my brother with.” Another wants a trip to Disneyland. I suspect both will be disappointed.

When I was a child, no one got to read my Christmas lists. My parents craftily convinced my sister and I that because Santa enters the home through the chimney, the fireplace was surely the way to get a message back to him. So, every year our lists went into an envelope addressed to Santa, which was then thrown into the fireplace.

But of course, children aren’t the only ones with fantasy wish lists this Christmas: Boris, Jeremy and Jo all have them too! Want more spending on the NHS, whilst paying less tax? Want better buses for rural areas (how else can we get to Birmingham to catch HS2 to London?) Or perhaps you’d prefer an end to homelessness, a pay rise for the public sector and an end to university tuition fees? Dear Santa…

It seems strange to have an election so close to Christmas. I haven’t heard how Brenda from Bristol has reacted this time round, but I suspect she’ll be loving a Christmas election. She might even suggest doing with the politicians’ Christmas manifesto lists, what my parents did with my Christmas lists all those years ago, assuming you’re still allowed a fireplace in eco-friendly Bristol!

Underlying all of our Christmas and manifesto wish lists is a hope that by changing something outside ourselves, life might become better. And whilst there’s certainly a lot of things that need fixing in our country, at Christmas time it’s important for each of us to remember that the change we need to see most of all, isn’t “out there” but “in here”, in our own hearts and minds.

One of the most beautiful expressions of the difference a changed heart and mind can make is found in a short New Testament letter written by St Paul from his Roman jail cell to the church in the Greek city of Philippi. Despite facing martyrdom and the grim daily joys of Roman prison, he tells his Philippian friends not to worry about him, because he’s

learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want.”

You might wonder what that secret is, and here’s a clue, you’ll find in any of the party manifestoes or in any child’s Christmas list!

Here’s what the secret is. Paul says,

I can do all this through [Christ] who gives me strength” (Philippians 4:13).

It turns out that the child whose birth we celebrate at Christmas is the only one who can transform our hearts and minds to such an extent, that we can face any circumstance with contentment.

So as you cast your vote on December 12^th, remember what deep down in our hearts we all know – that no matter what they promise, politicians never bring contentment! For true hope we have to look beyond the manifesto to the manger!

To find out more about God’s manifesto for contentment, why don’t you join us at your local church’s carol service this Christmas? Visit www.hopechurchfamily.org/christmas for details. And whichever way you vote, may you have a very happy Christmas and a prosperous new year!

First published in the Bridge Magazine, December 2019

We will remember them

admin 07/11/2019

Until I moved here in 2016, I didn’t know that Upton was the home of a Dunkirk hero: Captain William Tennant, of the destroyer HMS Wolfhound.

Nicknamed “Dunkirk Joe” by the men under his command, Tennant was the cool-headed “Beachmaster” who co-ordinated the evacuation. Arriving off Dunkirk on 26^th May, Tennant stayed until June 2^nd, by which time some 378,829 allied troops had been evacuated. Tennant’s final act before departing was to sail up and down the beaches with a megaphone, calling out for any remaining British troops to come forward and be rescued.

Sadly, Tennant didn’t feature in Christopher Nolan’s recent Dunkirk film, but it’s pretty obvious that Nolan’s fictional character Commander Bolton (played by Kenneth Branagh) was largely inspired by Tennant role in the evacuation.

Tennant’s affinity for beach-operations also saw him play a key role in the D-Day landings in 1944. Now a Rear-Admiral, he was placed in charge of the floating Mulberry Harbours that were towed across the English Channel to Normandy. Within 12 days of D-Day, the Mulberry Harbours at Omaha and Arromanches were fully operational, and over the next ten months, two and a half million men, a half million vehicles, and four million tons of supplies passed through them.

Tennant was knighted n 1945, and after retiring, he returned to Upton, where he died in 1963. A statue of him stands near the Pepperpot in Upton, where we gather on Remembrance Sunday every year to remember all those who gave so much in the service of our freedom.

Remembrance does of course take many forms: both personal and civic.

If your family had a funeral with our churches over the last twelve months, you should already have been invited to come to our Service for the Faithful Departed (Sunday 17 November, 4pm). But if not, or if you have someone else you’d like to remember, even if we didn’t take the funeral, then you are welcome to join in! During the service, we read out the names of the people being remembered, so please pass their names to the church office (01684 591241 or admin@hopechurchfamily.org) as soon as possible.

You’re also invited to our civic Remembrance Service (10:45am, Sunday 10 November). Upton’s British Legion recently closed, and as part of this year’s Remembrance service we’ll be laying up their standard, and Upton’s new Baptist Minister, Amy Wearing, will be speaking. After the service, we’ll march down to the war memorial at the Pepperpot, for the laying of wreaths. You can find details of the Remembrance services in our other communities on page __.

Jesus taught that the sacrifices people make reveal the love they have for us. When he said,

Greater love has no one than this, to lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13)

he was pointing us forward to his own self-sacrificial death on the cross, helping us see it as a proof of God’s love for us.

And as we look back on those who we have personally loved and lost, it’s possible to apply Jesus words to them also, which is why it is so important that every year we gather to remember those who gave their lives for our freedom.

Changing your mind

admin 05/10/2019

The man who never alters his opinions is like standing water, and breeds reptiles of the mind” (William Blake)

So have you had enough of Brexit? What I find most frustrating about it is that irrespective of whether parliament should have been prorogued or not, you only have to watch a few minutes of our MPs squabbling to see that the battle lines are so drawn-up that no matter how good the argument either for or against Brexit, no one is going to change their minds.

Now the print deadline for the Bridge means that I wrote those rather cynical words about no one changing their minds back on 13 September. So if by some miracle, something remarkable has happened since that date, and our MPs are now united in their approach to Brexit, then let me say how delighted I am to be wrong! But given how rare it is for people to change their minds, I bet I’m not!

The economist JK Galbraith said,

Faced with the choice between changing one’s mind and proving that there’s no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy on the proof.”

Which seems to me exactly what our MPs are doing. But before we condemn the lot of them for their stubbornness, let’s admit we’ve got a dog in this fight too. For all we claim that we’re open to changing our minds, we rarely do. Despite all the arguments and statistics, we encounter day by day, and all the opportunities we have to scrutinise those facts, are we really open to changing our minds?

And what’s true of Brexit, is also true of life’s even more important issues! We all have our answers to life’s big questions, and we’re sticking to them, even if we’ve never tested them, to see if they work. And whilst I’d probably not go quite so far as Greek philosopher Socrates did, when he said that,

The unexamined life is not worth living,”

I do think he has a point. There is something unhealthy about being totally closed to change.

That’s why I love to run our annual Alpha Course. Every year people come with their questions and doubts and concerns, not just about the Christian faith, but about life, the universe and everything. At every session, we watch a short presentation about a different aspect of the Christian life, and then we discuss it, and as the weeks go by, friendships form, questions are answered, fears alleviated, and just occasionally lives are transformed.

So, if you’re open to changing your mind about anything at all, why not give Alpha a try? It starts on Wednesday, Oct 2nd at 1:15pm in Upton Parish Church (St Peter and St Paul’s Church, Old Street, Upton). For more information, visit www.hopechurchfamily.org/alpha or just turn up at one of the sessions (though it does help us plan catering and resources if we know you’re coming).

First published in the Bridge Magazine, October 2019

Don’t go out, there’s a lion in the streets!

admin 22/09/2019

Vicar’s article from the Bridge Magazine, September 2019

If you’ll forgive a small holiday boast, I was enjoying a cold drink in the poolside bar on our campsite in France, when I heard the news that Boris Johnson was to be our new Prime Minister.

I don’t know how you feel about his appointment, and this article certainly won’t tell you how to feel about it. I won’t be mentioning the Br**it word either, so please don’t accuse me of mixing religion and politics!

I’m also conscious that there’s a possibility that by the time you read this, Boris may be an ex-Prime Minister. But assuming he is still PM, one thing I have appreciated about Boris as PM is his optimism. Whether it was the pun in his first speech as Tory leader: turning the acronym DUD (Deliver, Unite, Defeat) into DUDE (by adding ENERGISE) or his first speech as PM when he rejected the “doubters, doomsters and gloomsters”, I’ve appreciated the government’s shift in tone from fear and “unfounded doubt” to hope and possibility.

The Bible has a great Proverb about fear and unfounded doubt,

The slothful man saith, ‘There is a lion in the way; a lion is in the streets’” (Proverbs 26:13)

It’s a proverb about how fear, worry and pessimism about the future, can paralyse us: there wasn’t really a lion in the street, the man was just worried there might be. Fear and unfounded doubt mean he stays in bed.

Sometimes these fears and unfounded doubts come from painful memories. One day on holiday, three of my older kids and I decided our beach-trip experience would be vastly enhanced by climbing the not-steep 40-foot cliff at the back of the beach, and like the fit young mountain goats they are, the kids were soon at the top. But I hung back a little, “to make sure that if any of them got into difficulty I could catch them.” Honest!

The real reason I hung back was that about a quarter of the way up, I had to stand on a small flat rock, get my balance, and then stretch out across a gap to the next bit of the cliff. As I stood there contemplating the stretch, I had a brief flashback to July 2003, when I lost my balance and fell off a similar rock.

Which brings me to a second Bible proverb,

Worry is a heavy burden…” (Proverbs 12:25)

My worries certainly were a heavy burden as I stood on that rock. The memory of falling made me so doubt my ability to stand upright, that I began to wobble, and nearly fell again.

Worry and unfounded fear weigh us down and paralyse us: in politics and economics; in business and the workplace; in our schools, churches and social clubs; and of course in our relationships. If we spend all our time worrying about what might go wrong, we’ll never get anything done. Indeed, worrying about things going wrong is probably the best way of making sure that they do.

Thankfully the proverb continues,

Worry is a heavy burden, but a kind word always brings cheer.”

A kind word is exactly what one of my kids offered: “Come on Dad, you can do it!” I laughed off the fear, made the step, and lived to tell the tale.

That’s why I’m enjoying Boris’ cheery optimism so far. It doesn’t mean everything he tries to do will be right, but his optimism and a can-do spirit mean he’s more likely to succeed than the doubters, doomsters and gloomsters. Please pray for him, and all our politicians, in the tricky months ahead.

Rev’d Barry Unwin

Why gratitude is good for you!

admin 30/08/2019

One night in July last year I was woken by a loud low buzzing as something large and striped landed on my ear. Instinctively I swatted it away, reached for the light, and discovered I had a rather large hornet buzzing around the room.

Now July is the month the tabloids start running Asian Hornet scare-stories. Apparently, if just one Asian hornet queen manages to breed in the UK, our indigenous wasps and Hornets will be destroyed, our orchards devastated, and ultimately the government will fall, or something like that. And so determined to do my bit for Queen and Country, I resolved to vanquish this invader, until I remembered that not everything you read in the tabloids is true, put down the fly swatter and picked up a glass and postcard instead.

After a few slightly scary minutes of “catch the hornet”, the disturber of my peace turned out to be a rather large, but indigenous, European Hornet. And then because it was getting pretty angry at being confined, I took it outside and released it! Sorry if it flew into your house instead.

Now inevitably there’s a sting to this tale! But it isn’t about our attitude to immigration and foreign invaders, it’s about gratitude! You see, as I drifted back off to sleep I had a rather odd thought: what did hornet think when I released it? Was it grateful I didn’t kill it or were its thoughts so wrapped up in itself that all it could think was, ‘Didn’t I do well to escape there’?

Now in the cold light of day, I don’t suppose the hornet thought either of those things – but the mind does strange things at two o’clock in the morning – and mine started thinking about some of the times when I’ve thought “Didn’t I do well there?” When really I should have been saying thank-you to all the people who helped – and most especially saying thank-you to the God who makes all things possible and who loves to bless and heal and free his people.

One of the books in the Bible is a songbook largely written by an Israelite king called David. Here’s how one of his songs begins, “I will give thanks to you, LORD, with all my heart; I will tell of all your wonderful deeds.” (Psalm 9:1) Singing that song was David’s way of helping his mind move from being all wrapped up in itself, to a position of gratitude.

And the reason David wanted to do that is he instinctively knew what the psychologists will tell you: that being grateful is good for you! According to the scientists, grateful people have more friends, are healthier, happier, less prone to being angry, feel better about themselves, and are stronger and more resilient in the face of hardship. They even sleep better (except when disturbed by a hornet).

Gratitude is good for us! We shouldn’t say “If only life were better, I’d be grateful” instead we need to learn that being grateful makes life better. The more grateful we are, the better life will be. And that’s why gratitude is good for us.

May you enjoy the rest of our summer – and give thanks for all the good things in it. Even Hornets!

First published in the Bridge Magazine, August 2019

How to get better not bitter!

admin 16/05/2019

Vicar’s article from the Bridge Magazine, May 2019

How to get better, not bitter

I was catching up with some old friends at a conference recently, and they started talking about all the great things going in their churches: growing youth and children’s ministries, soup kitchens, Food Banks and so on. All good stuff. And yet for some reason, I struggled to be really happy for them. If truth be told, I was more than a little jealous. Later, as I reflected on the conversations, I found myself wondering, why is it that when you compare yourself with others, you always end up feeling bitter?

This isn’t a new phenomenon. Writing well over a century ago, long before Facebook and Instagram or other forms of social media, Theodore Roosevelt, the 26^th US President, said, “Comparison is the thief of joy.” Which rather begs the question, why do we compare ourselves with others at all?

Now at one level comparison is helpful. The business world has long had a practice called Benchmarking: a process by which a company can compare itself with other similar companies to identify opportunities for improvement. At its best, it’s a scientific, data-driven process that can be an incredibly helpful tool for growing an organisation. But done badly, without due consideration to the differing circumstances of the companies, and without access to all the data, it can be really harmful.

And it’s this lack of access to the data that makes comparing ourselves to others so damaging. After all, we might be experts on how we feel on the inside, but if all we have for comparison is how others look on the outside, we’re going to reach some dumb conclusions. As church leader Steve Furtick puts it, “The reason we struggle with insecurity is because we compare our behind the scenes with everyone else’s highlight reel”

Jesus tells a story in Matthew 25 about a rich man who gives each of his servants some money and tells them to put it to work. Later, he assesses what they’ve done, and in a scene, not a million miles removed from Sir Alan Sugar in the Apprentice, one of the candidates is discovered to have done nothing at all with the money and is fired.

But where Jesus’ story differs from the Apprentice, is the liberating way in which the master treats the remaining candidates. Instead of ranking them to find a winner, he rewards each of them. It’s his way of saying that our task in life isn’t to sprint to the finish comparing ourselves with others to see who comes first, second or third. Instead, we’re to run our own race, in our own lane. The goal is not to win, but to make the best use of the gifts God has given us, by becoming the best version of ourselves we can possibly be. As someone once said, “No one in the entire world can do a better job of being you, than you.”

So next time you’re chatting with friends, or you’re jealously watching the highlight reel of their lives on Facebook or Instagram, remind yourself that God hasn’t called you to run their race. Instead, he wants you to focus on running your own. And when you do that, not only do you run your own race better, but it sets you free to enjoy the success of others. It makes you better, not bitter.

All you need is love…

admin 16/04/2019

Vicar’s article from the Bridge Magazine, March 2019

All you need is love

How did your Valentine’s Day go? Chances are your February 14^th went a lot better than it did for the two men for whom the day is named.

Today’s consumer-driven Valentine’s Day festival traces its roots back to the 14^th century English poet Chaucer, whose poem the Parliament of Foules pictured all the birds meeting to choose their mates on St Valentine’s Day. But the day’s origins are older than Chaucer. It was the 5^th century Pope Gelasius I who made February 14^th St Valentine’s Day. He wanted to help people forget a banned Roman pagan festival called Lupercalia which was traditionally celebrated in mid-February. During Lupercalia, youths raced naked through the streets of Rome, striking women with bloody strips of flesh taken from the remains of goats and dogs sacrificed on the Lupercal Altar. This practice was thought to increase women’s fertility.

Instead, Pope Gelasius introduced something altogether more wholesome: a day to honour two early Christian leaders, both called Valentine, who were martyred by Emperor Claudius II around 270AD.

The Kingdom of Easter

admin 16/04/2019

Published in the Bridge Magazine, April 2019

The Kingdom of Easter

So what’s Easter really all about? The crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus? New beginnings? Flowers, chocolate and Easter bunnies?

To make sense of Easter you have to understand one thing: Jesus’ core message. So if you’ve just picked this magazine up at random, then read on – because if you grasp this, you’ll be well ahead of a lot of churchgoers!

The gospel of Mark sums up Jesus’ core message like this:

The time has come, the Kingdom of God is near. Repent and believe the good news.” (Mark 1:14).

Jesus’ core message is as simple as that.

So what does this “Kingdom of God” mean? Maybe it’s like a religious frequent flyers club where you build up point for being good and doing religious things and being on church fundraising committees. Now those are all good things, but they aren’t what Jesus meant.

Or maybe the Kingdom of God is about politics: a way for religious leaders to motivate the masses to fight for whatever bit of land needs defending? But that’s not what Jesus had in mind, either.

Instead, think about kingdom like this: remember the days when you used to sit in the back seat of your parents’ car and fight with your brother or sister about “my side” and “your side”? Well, your “kingdom” is the bit of the seat you rule over. And that’s what the Kingdom of God is like: it’s the realm over which God rules: a realm of eternal love, peace and justice.

Now when some people hear that, they imagine Jesus means Heaven, but again that’s not what Jesus meant. The Kingdom of God isn’t about us going from down here on earth, to up there in Heaven. Instead, when Jesus talked about the Kingdom of God his focus was on bringing up there down here. That’s why he taught us to pray in the Lord’s Prayer, “Your Kingdom Come, your will be done, on earth as in heaven.” His point is not that we go up to Heaven, it’s that the Kingdom of Heaven is coming down to earth. And it all starts with Jesus. His body and life was the first place people could see God’s will being done on earth, as they would in Heaven.

That’s why he was such a threat to the rulers of his day. It wasn’t “love one another” that troubled them, it was all his talk about Kingdoms. That’s why they killed him. And that’s why God raised him from the dead: because in the Kingdom of God, there is no death. Only life in all its fullness, forever.

And that’s the point of Easter: a forever and a day promise of life in all its fullness, in the Kingdom of God; a Kingdom which is still near to us now.

And to receive it, we have to welcome it’s king, Jesus, by making him the centre of our lives. And when we do that –a little bit of “up there” comes and dwells in us, a deposit guaranteeing us all of God’s Kingdom promises for the future.

So that’s Easter: The Kingdom of God is near – repent and believe the good news. And it’s as true and accessible today as it was on the first Easter Sunday.

May you have a very Happy Easter, and may a little bit of “up there” come “down here” to dwell with you this Easter time.

Visit www.hopechurchfamily.org/easter to find out about Easter celebrations in the church in your community.

In a spirit of full disclosure, I might have pinched an idea or two for this article from a talk given by US Pastor John Ortberg on Easter Sunday 2015.