While it was still dark

While it was still dark I woke up this morning and felt quite alone. Thousands of miles from close family I looked for a way of getting close to them. The text message I sent as I thought about them, read Happy Easter and ended with love. Within a few moments a reassuring reply came back and after I had spoken to my family, heard a familiar voice, the world did not seem so big and I did not feel so alone. Was this something of what Mary Magdalene felt?

Yesterday, Saturday I visited three "small" churches whose memberships had been built up from scratch in a few years. The smallest has 105 members and they all have three or four mission stations that are not yet able to support themselves and the Minister. I was struck by many things.

As I ask colleagues for their thoughts on why many churches in Cuba are growing, there seems to be a sense of why not? - it feels like a community of mostly early believers that have not known any other way. Was this what Mary and the other disciples of Jesus must have felt?

I am humbled by my Cuban colleagues in ministry for most of whom their home almost every day is a thoroughfare for church life. They welcome me as they welcome everyone else in the church, with an open door and heart. You rest when you need to with no sense of need for, or discomfort, at the absence of private space. Is this something like Mary's place must have felt like to visit?

In every church we visited, there was a board with members record of their tithes - they were almost all up to date with their offering. This is a church that takes so much of the Bible literally. Something that at times makes me feel quite uncomfortable.

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