If you would like to think more about the big questions of life and explore the Christian faith further, one great way to do this is through the Alpha Course. Have a look at our Alpha page for further details.
Thinking more about Jesus
Jesus lived on Earth about 2000 years ago. He grew up in a working class family (his adopted dad was a carpenter) in a country under military occupation (by the Romans) and as an infant was a refugee in Egypt after threats to his life were made by the government. However he spent most of his early life in the north of modern Israel and no one took much notice of him until he was in his thirties.
At that time he gathered around him a rag-tag bunch of people (known as his disciples) including a terrorist sympathiser (zealot) and a Roman collaborator (tax-collector), and started an extraordinary 3 years of teaching about God. He became hugely popular with ordinary people because of the accessible stories he told about God and how He loves us, and because of the miracles he performed. But he fell out with those in power, and his teaching came to an abrupt end when he was arrested and executed.
But after 3 days he rose from the grave and appeared to his frightened disciples, starting with the women. They were not expecting this, and one didn’t believe at first. Then this rag-tag bunch of ordinary people, the disciples, told everyone what had happened.
Those first disciples of Jesus found something that modern-day followers of Jesus also discover – that he is alive and with them, day by day. And Jesus’ death, somehow, is the thing that puts us right with God and means we can know God at work in our lives – and that he loves us and cares about us.
Jesus’s followers spread throughout the Roman world and were horribly persecuted before the Good News about Jesus became the official religion of the Roman Empire about 300 years later.
You can read about the story of Jesus and his teaching yourself in the Bible using the links above, or the book of Luke is a good place to read the whole story. When he was asked what the most important lesson was …
27 He said, “That you love the Lord your God with all your passion and prayer and muscle and intelligence — and that you love your neighbour as well as you do yourself.” Luke 10:27 The Message (MSG)
If you would like to know more about Jesus, or have questions you’d like to explore, do please get in touch. You might like to think about going on the Alpha Course – a great way to explore the big questions of life and faith in a friendly way.
