麻豆约拍

Good morning,

When I visited Batticaloa on the east coast of Sri Lanka a few months after the tsunami in 2004 the local Priest lamented: "The sea is calm today like a good boy." The previous Boxing Day the waves of the tsunami were high above the coconut trees, destroying everything in their path.

As we drove past the shells of the ruined homes, he told me stories of the families who once lived there and what happened on the day that struck terror around the world.

I was taken to the refugee camps there and met many people who had lost family and possessions and were left with nothing.

Some people in the camps were still living in tents, others in tin huts in which they either baked in the mid-day sun or lived in fear of being washed out when the monsoon season came. Clothes sent from the UK were certainly put to good use.

I sat down in the sand to talk to one young woman and play with her children outside their tin hut. Having lost her husband and her mother, she was now left alone with her small family. As with many others throughout the world today, hers was a heartbreaking story.

Then she offered me a drink of cherryade. I didn鈥檛 know what to say. She had nothing and yet she could give me a drink.

Mary Magdalene, in history perhaps a much misunderstood but loyal and brave follower of Christ, has her feast day today. Just as Mary was the first witness of the resurrection, so this woman鈥檚 action was a symbol, in all that devastation in Sri Lanka, of new life and hope for the future.

Help us Lord today, like Mary Magdalene, to be pointers to the hope of new life. Amen.