Thought for the Week – Wimbledon

Summer is surely upon us as following Glastonbury all eyes are now on Wimbledon for the next couple of weeks. The Wimbledon championship is an important piece of television history, when on 1 July 1967 the first official colour television broadcast took place in the UK. Four hours of live coverage of the 1967 Championships was shown on BBC Two, which was the first television channel in Europe to regularly broadcast in colour. Fifty-two years later Wimbledon attracts a worldwide audience of several millions.   Opening matches this year saw defending champion Novak Djokovic win over Germany’s Philipp Kohlschreiber and the emerging star will undoubtably be 15 years old American Cori Gauff on her way to victory after defeating five times veteran champion Venus Williams.  Now that was a surprise!

Not all of us are able to be there. I know some Llanelli tennis lovers who go for the day in the hope of getting to see a match or to just soak up the unique atmosphere. Most of us for the last fifty-two years have had to rely on TV for the duration of the competition and how we’ve enjoyed it. With her fifty-inch TV and all-around sound one eighty-year-old in our congregation never misses a game and feels in the comfort of her front room that she’s at centre court; on finals day treating herself to strawberries and cream.  In her view, Wimbledon comes to her,far more comfortable,certainly less expensive!

The experience of actually being where Jesus walked and talked and miraculously changed the lives of so many is for some an uplifting and joyous experience.  That’s why visiting the Holy Land is such a special spiritual occurrence. However,most of us have never walked where Jesus walked and yet through the testimony of the Gospel writers we too have entered into the very same experience of God’s grace and love. The Gospels record for us the life and teachings of Jesus so that we too are able to know the wonderful revelation of God’s love through his life, death and resurrection. With the added gift of the Holy Spirit Jesus is as near to us as he was to those who met with him long ago in Galilee. Jesus is with us – we’re in the centre court and front row as far as God is concerned – loved with an everlasting love – indeed it’s ‘Love all’