Miracle Valley : The Story of the Hollybush Christian Fellowship.

By Jim Wilkinson with Chris Spencer. (2001)

This is an updating of a previous book first published in 1984. It tells the story of a farmer who wanted to serve God and where that desire took Him. It is an interweaving of the price of cattle, the ups and downs of family life and the miraculous work of the Holy Spirit. This story of the development of a Christian Fellowship is honestly told without the setbacks and disappointments being glossed over. It taught me several things; that God will use whomsoever He chooses, He is with us in our downs as well as our ups and above all that we should expect and look for the divine miraculous working of the Spirit in our everyday live and in the life of our church.

Justice and the Existence of God

“It is not fair” was a cry I often heard from pupils at school when they thought they were suffering under an arbitrary punishment or an excessive amount of homework. This feeling is felt not only by children. Many of us, of all ages have the feeling that things should be just.

If you believe in God the cry becomes more intense. “Why doesn’t God do something to stop it?” The abuser gets away with it and the abused is ruined. The powerful glut themselves on spoils from the innocent. Where is God in this? The temptation is to abandon our belief in God and cast ourselves on an atheistic explanation. We are part of nature, red in tooth and claw. Abandon God yet the pain remains. Things should be just.

The Jews of Europe have suffered, but many Jews hold to a belief in God. The blacks of the southern United States suffered slavery and yet many are intensely religious. Human suffering does not always lead to atheism.  It is an old problem and one of the Psalmists deals with the particular problem of evil people who are successful. “When I tried to understand all this, it was oppressive to me till I entered the sanctuary of God, then I understood their final destiny.”[i] The human craving for fairness will never be satisfied until we grasp that this is not the only life. There is another life in which things are put right, the kingdom of God.  The enigma of human pain drives me to a belief in God.

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[i] Psalm 73