As coronavirus forced churches to close this Easter, Cleland Thom asks whether God's will was done.



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I mean, the Pope delivered his Good Friday message, standing on his own in St Peter's Square.

And the Archbishop of Canterbury gave an Easter message from his kitchen.

But for me, I reckon this is exactly how God wanted it.

How's that?

Firstly, because God wanted to remind us - as the Archbishop said - that his people are the church.

So, perhaps churches who own or rent buildings, received a wake-up call from on high this Easter.

Christianity was never about buildings.

In fact, Jesus came to do away with them as places of worship. He knew they can easily become the enemy of his main message of loving people and reconnecting them with God.

Buildings can become more important than people, and lead to a system of rules regulations and procedures.
Jesus hated stuff like that.

In fact, he was thrown out of at least one synagogue and said that the temple in Jerusalem would be flattened. It was - and God did nothing to stop it.

In God's sight, Christians are temples, and that beautiful cathedral down the road is just an historic building.

So, buildings might have closed this Easter, but millions of Christians across the world were open for business.

They were active online, on social media, in communities, praying in their homes, doing acts of kindness and praying for miracles during the lockdown.

In fact, the church was everywhere, apart from in buildings. Christians were finally where they should be - where everyone else was.

And maybe the heads of denominations and groups will now pause and ask themselves questions like: 'Do we spend more on our buildings than we do the poor?'