Dear Everybody,

Well, what a winter THAT was, and no mistake!

Although, as I'm writing this before mid-February, I'll say sorry now if you're looking out of the window at more deep drifts of snow – please read the first sentence as “what a winter THIS is... etc!”

Whoever would have thought, after about a decade of damp, grey, dreich, snow-less winters, we'd find ourselves listening to weather forecasts of “a few centimetres of snow” and think, “is that all? That's nothing!”, because after the several-feet-of-the-stuff snowfalls of Christmas and New Year, a couple of centimetres really did feel like not very much.

In the worst of the snow, some folk remarked wisely that it brings home to us our vulnerability. For all our 21st century technology, and our faster ways of communicating and getting about, it takes just one thumping snowfall to bring the country all but grinding to a halt. Of course some of the technology helped (who would have ventured out without a mobile phone?), but by and large, we had to stay put and wait until the weather got warmer and the snow melted.

Sometimes, maybe, we need to be reminded that we are terribly vulnerable and dependent on each other and on God. When we are busy (over-busy?) leading our lives, it's easy to feel in control of our own destinies.

The writers of the Old Testament had no such delusions – they were terribly aware of their reliance on a God whose power was immense. They puzzled over how great a God could be bothered with the likes of them. The writer of Psalm 8 put it in poetic language this way:

“When I look at the sky, which you have made,
at the moon and the stars, which you set in their places –
what are human beings that you think of them;
mere mortals, that you care for them?” (Psalm 8 verses 3 & 4)

Maybe it does us good, now and then, to remember God's awesome power and our utter dependence on Him, for every breath. But as the days of Lent lead us towards Good Friday and Easter Day, let's also give thanks and celebrate that this same, unimaginably powerful God chose to become one of us as vulnerable as we are. And He allowed us to take that life away in the cruellest way possible, so that He could come through death to offer us everlasting life. For love of us all.

Happy Easter and God bless,

Catriona

© Cumbernauld Old Parish Church of Scotland; Registered Scottish Charity SC000877