You won’t have heard of it but in 1929 the Great West Aerodrome was founded on land 14 miles from the centre of London, in the midst of farms, market gardens and orchards, and just a stone’s throw from the tiny hamlet of – Heathrow. After World War Two it seemed the perfect location for a new civil airport to serve the city and a huge expansion was begun. No one envisaged that 70 years later passenger numbers would be approaching 75 million, and that the city itself would have expanded to virtually surround the airport. Any decision on further expansion to accommodate ever growing numbers became politically toxic and a succession of politicians dodged having to do so. As the famous joke has it when someone asks for directions and is told, “Well I wouldn’t start from here!” This week the British Prime Minister must be wishing that that was indeed an option.
Sometimes too in life we take of stock of where we are and wish that we could start over. If only we could wipe the slate clean and start again things could be so different. Well the good news of the Gospel of Jesus is that just such a possibility exists. As the Apostle Paul writes, “If anyone is in Christ, they are a new creation, the old has gone, the new has come!”i
i2 Corinthians 5:17