Product Description

The theme of bereavement has a particular resonance for Easington Colliery. One day in May 1951, just as the night shift was leaving and the early morning shift arriving, there was a large underground explosion. Families and friends gathered at the pit gates, and gradually the news emerged that eighty-one miners and two rescue workers had died. The last body was not brought out for over a fortnight.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #226575 in Books
• Published on: 2007-11-22
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 96 pages

About the Author
N.T. Wright is one of the leading theologians and New Testament scholars working anywhere in the world today. He is Bishop of Durham, and lectures regularly at all the major US and UK academic and theological establishments, including Yale, Harvard and Princeton. He is extensively published in the US.

Customer Reviews

Bringing our Pain to the Foot of the Cross
During Easter 2007, Tom Wright gave a series of sermons to the church at Easington Colliery. This is a community that had been totally dependent on its coal mine for most of its jobs, and hence the economic life of the area. Devastating consequences followed when the pit was closed. Some 15 years later, the community finds itself at a place of pain, distress, anguish and bitterness. Not enough work, no affordable housing, the radical decline of social cohesion caused by the loss of the community's central locus. Add to this the ravages of our times; drugs, alcohol, and crime, and you have an area struggling to keep its head above water. It is into this situation that Wright brings the story of Jesus.

Following the last week of Jesus' life, with its pain, sorrow and ultimate joy, Wright interweaves the story of Easington (and with it, our own stories of pain). He deftly brings his scholarship to bear, with a pastor's heart and concern for those to whom he ministers. Ultimately, God's great story of redemption which culminates in the cross and resurrection, gives us the hope to leave behind our own pain at the foot of the cross and to look forward to the new heavens and new earth in which we will follow after Jesus into full-embodied resurrection life. The challenge for Easington, as for us, is to live between Good Friday and Easter Day - we live in the light of what God has done in Christ and in the light of what we know is to come - Jesus' resurrection has made that glorious future certain. Thus, Wright urges us to bring comfort to those in pain and the healing of forgiveness, and the hope of a better future.

This proved a wonderful little book for my own Lenten reflections. Real people and a real situation was woven into the story of Jesus and God's love for the world. A world full of pain, but for which there is an answer.