Audrey Hope of Oxenhope Methodist Church writes

Some time go I attended a church meeting when the minister asked if anyone knew what "Mizpah" meant.

Well, in my box of treasures I have a Mizpah brooch, bought for my grandmother by my grandfather in about 1902.

It is silver with two hearts side by side. On the left heart is engraved the word "Mizpah" and on the right heart are the words "The Lord watch between me and thee when we are absent from one another".

This set me thinking. Years ago ordinary folk lived their lives very much in the shadow of the church and their faith.

Greeting cards of the early 1900s usually had a religious message. Hundreds of songs were written and sung asking for God's help and love.

I became what is now called a teenager at the end of the 1939-45 war. Children at that time learned the Lord's Prayer and the 23rd Psalm by heart.

At Christmas we listened to and learned the story of Jesus' birth, which sounded so poetical. "There were shepherds abiding in the field" and the angel telling them "Fear not, but go to Bethlehem and find the child lying in a manger".

This wonderful story is depicted in nativity plays the world over.

We have just commemorated Easter when the Son of God died and rose for us so that our sins can be forgiven if we confess that we are truly sorry.

Jesus gave us a new beginning to our lives, a fresh start. Sadly so many ignore this wonderful message.

God's power, through Jesus, can be within us, like the air we breathe.

In this country we have been guided since childhood in the Christian faith - in recalling Easter let us strengthen our hold of that faith and all it freely offers us.

In doing so, as we awake to each new day, we shall remember that "This is the day the Lord has made, so rejoice and be glad in it".