By: MARGARET BROWN
Margaret Brown is one of The Resident’s longest standing contributors and has lived in the Algarve for more than 20 years. As well as Point of View, she also writes Country Matters twice a month.
IN A similar way that requesting a soft drink at a party sometimes makes one appear out of step, at a social gathering of the unconvinced or ‘anti’ faith lobby much the same happens.
I was told a couple of weeks ago that I never used to be a Christian and was asked if I had ‘joined’ now that I was aged because I was afraid of dying? While this was not my motivation, it was worth serious consideration.
Looking back, apart from the time I wrote home to my parents from boarding school to tell them I no longer believed in God and would worship horses instead, I hadn’t given it much thought.
Sunday service was attended either to please my Grandparents or because the headmistress felt it might improve my general conduct. Desultory attendance during the next fifty five years touched neither heart nor imagination until one day in the mid-1990s, several of us attended a Bible Class led by St.Vincent’s Assistant Chaplain.
As he steered us through Mathew’s Gospel, it came alive – discussing, questioning and arguing over what we had heard suspended disbelief until the next session while the already convinced widened their knowledge and understanding.
Together we moved forward, rookies and old hands looking for enlightenment and finding a common bond that still remains strong and comforting.
Yes, perhaps I am afraid of dying which comes in various ways, but death is an unknown quantity. Increased study of the Bible and especially the life, ministry and death of Christ offers both hope and a light at the end of a long, dark tunnel.
Do I believe in life after death? I am still working on that and will have to wait and see.
