COLUMN: Maybe it's time this Easter that you discovered the joys of Christianity
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Food for Thought by Lorna Tunstall
I have just discovered audio books. I am not sure why it has taken so long.
I wonder if it is because I love nothing better than holding a book in my hands, caressing its cover, going back to pages previously read time and time again.
Books for me are the window between our own thoughts and the world. Words can stimulate our imagination in ways that sometimes a picture or film cannot.
How often have you gone to see a film adaptation of a much-loved book only for it not to be interpretated the way you had in your own mind?
Audio books don’t really give that same tactile satisfaction as a physical book. Unless the trade-off is the option to engage in a story or not at all.
The time-pressed amongst us may not have the option of sitting back and indulging in that latest piece of literature.
Audio books for me, are the hybrid solution to that problem.
I spend a lot of time in my car as I travel from place to place. Audio books have become my new companion, my new friend.
If you discount the theological books and commentaries that I read for Church, I have in the past few months, listened to more books than I perhaps read in the whole of last year.
It has been a different way of connecting with a narrative and yet it has worked.
Journeys have seemed so much shorter. I often must wait in the car just to get to the end of the chapter I am listening to, such is my engagement with the story.
I wonder what it is that we have avoided all our lives and then found, to our dismay, that we have benefited from it? Enjoyed it more than we thought? Wished we had discovered it sooner? Gone on to promote it to others as I am doing through this column?
As Christians we are told to bring the good news of Christ to others but often it is the one thing we are shy to do.
We happily chat about the weather, engage about topical stories in our newspapers or on TV.
Why is it so hard to talk about the one thing that sustains us, that guides us and that is at the heart of our very being?
Some of us may have been told as children, never to talk about politics or religion, I wonder if we should try a new approach?
I wonder if rather than avoiding talking about our beliefs, we should do the exact opposite.
We could share the diversity of opinions that we may have with one another.
We can ask each other the big questions that perhaps we have been too scared to ask.
Perhaps by doing this we would gain a better understanding of WHY people believe what they do believe.
We could learn from one another.
I wonder if I can invite you all to try something different for yourselves over the next few weeks?
This Easter, why not take time to discover the joy that the Easter message holds for us Christians? Why not come along to a Church service near you?
You never know, just like my audio books you may wish you had discovered Christianity a lot sooner!
Rev Lorna Tunstall is the Church of Scotland minister at Brora and Helmsdale and also the interim moderator at Dornoch Cathedral.
Services at Clyne Church, Brora, take place every Sunday from 10.30am while at Dornoch Cathedral, Sunday services are held from 11am.
