Escaping death

It's 80 years ago since the almost one-year-long blitz on Birmingham came to a temporary halt. Brummies then had another year of respite before it resumed. A German bomber crashed near Earlswood Lakes in May 1941. Of the four German aircrew, only one, named Rudolf Budde, escaped the flaming wreckage. Being injured, he was taken to Solihull Hospital and later recovered.

Jesus also told a story where only one in four made it. A man sowed seed. He did it with abandon, scattering it here, there and everywhere. Some landed on the pathway, some where the soil was only shallow, other seed fell on ground where weeds and thistles flourished. Lastly, some seed fell on fertile soil. It was only the last of the four different soils which produced a good crop.

Jesus likened the story to how it works when God makes freely available his invitation of friendship. This word of invitation, says Jesus, is like the seed being scattered by the sower in the story. God scatters His invitations freely, in other words, without discrimination: men and women, rich and poor, religious or not and amongst all cultures. This call towards God is summed up in the words of Jesus, 'Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me... and you will find rest for your souls.

Our hearts are like the soil in the story. It is where Jesus' invitation to us lands. With some people, the seed of invitation finds stony ground; others take a superficial interest or are so distracted by the thistles of life and the entanglements of cares that they lose out. Lastly, a number are ready to grasp the opportunity that being in friendship with God offers and the new horizons that this opens up. It is this last group which we can say is like the fertile soil that went on to produce a good crop.

If your heart is receptive to the invitation of Jesus, then I encourage you to ask a Christian friend about how that seed of faith might grow, or you could read one of the four Gospels in the New Testament.

But for the grace of God, Rudolf Budde should have died in the wreckage of that bomber. He must have felt that a new life had been given to him. When we take up the invitation of Jesus, it's like that: we have emerged from a spiritual death into a new life.