DAY 3

A message through time

Has your phone pinged at you yet today to tell you that you’ve got a message. Often, I think we can get bombarded with quite a random range of messages every day. And the ping doesn’t really tell us which ones are the most important, they all ping the same!

The furthest thing from a text message I could think of is a message in a bottle!

Here’s a nice story.

In what was described as "perhaps the most famous message in a bottle love story", in March 1999 a green, ginger beer bottle was dredged up by a fisherman off the Essex coast. The bottle contained an 84-year-old letter that had been tossed into the English channel on September 9, 1914, by a British soldier, Private Thomas Hughes just days before he was killed in fighting in France. The letter was written to his wife who died in 1979. However, the fisherman who found it was determined to deliver it to a relative of Thomas and with the help of New Zealand post, he was able to, flying all the way to New Zealand his wife to deliver the letter to Thomas’ then 86-year-old daughter!

There are four Sundays in Advent and at each of them we are reminded how the message of God has travelled through time, and through different people and miraculously reaches us today. Like the fisherman who was determined to deliver Thomas Hughes' message, they were entrusted with God’s message that a Messiah or Saviour would come to bring hope (Mighty God); love (everlasting Father); peace, (Prince of Peace); and healing (Wonderful counsellor). In some traditions the advent candles, one lit for each Sunday in Advent, represent the virtues of Hope, faith, joy and peace.

It's a message cast adrift in hope upon each generation.