I love reading! I am lost if I don’t have at least one good book ready to pick up. Often I have more than one book on the go at any one time. The problem is finding enough time to actually get to read – usually it’s later in the evening in bed or a snatched chapter sometimes at lunch, if I’m lucky.

While I tend towards enjoying more inspirational books these days, often because it’s getting harder and harder to find a riveting novel I really want to read, I have just finished Bernard Cornwell’s absorbing The Pale Horseman set in Ninth Century England which tells of the Battle of Ethandun in Wiltshire.

It is one in a series of Cornwell’s informative historical novels about early England. His earlier book, The Last Kingdom, tells of the Danish defeat of Northumbria, Mercia and East Anglia and how in 878 the concept of England, its culture and language were reduced to a few square miles of swamp where King Alfred went into hiding in order to “regroup” and rally more men to the Saxon cause.

By all accounts he was a very pious and learned king who loved God devotedly and strived to further God’s kingdom, building churches wherever he went.

Cornwell speculates that if Alfred had not won the battle of Ethandun, there would possibly never have been a political entity called England, headed by a Christian king. Although it was Alfred’s successors who took back the northern kingdoms and united the Saxon lands into one kingdom called England, it was Alfred who turned the tide – an example of one event that changed the course of history.

We so often take for granted that all we enjoy today was at some point won for us in the distant and not so distant past at someone else’s expense and often through great hardship.

Nowhere is this better illustrated than in two very different events at this time of year – ANZAC Day, where we respectfully and gratefully remember those young men (and women) who so bravely died for their country as well as those who still serve in our armed forces today.

It is interesting that more and more people than ever before are commemorating ANZAC Day and, even if they do not themselves have Christian beliefs, they seem quite happy to take part in an essentially Christian service complete with hymn and prayer.

The second event I’m of course referring to is Easter, the greatest sacrifice of all, made when Jesus paid the ultimate penalty for our sins, granting mankind undeserved forgiveness and the freedom to live in God’s love.

Dutch botanist and philosopher Paul Boese once wrote: “Forgiveness does not change the past, but it does enlarge the future.”

And Jesus’ death and resurrection at Easter certainly did that – changing the world forever!

Wouldn’t it be amazing to see the growing numbers attending ANZAC Day services come into our chuches to commemorate and celebrate Easter?

– Fran Pardon