Empty?

Have you never read? (2:25) 

Of course they had. These were Pharisees, the keenest of the keen. They just had not realised what they were reading, had not realised its implications, had not allowed what they read to shake their prejudiced convictions. This is why my first question in any Bible study is, 'What surprises you?'. We all come to God's word with baggage, so every time we need to come ready to have it knocked off. If not we are like the Pharisees, who could not see Jesus clearly.

I have just been sorting my library, clearing out unwanted books. On a second (or is it third) clear through, I started recycling some that I could never see anyone reading, and I got to one called Competing Convictions. I still don't know what it's about but a chapter on church decline caught my eye. In it Robin Gill notes that in the part of rural Northumberland he studied, at the turn of the 20th century, there were more seats available in churches than the total head of population. In other words, empty rural churches are not a sign of declining of faith but of overenthusiastic building programmes. Useful now with social distancing, of course, but if you ever are prone to despair about how empty your local church has become compared to a town or a city church just do a little calculation to find the proportion of local residents in church. You'll soon be encouraged. Mind you it may also make you think hard about what can best be done with all those enormous buildings, so be careful.