I guess we all make mistakes at times. I can readily recall the embarrassment I felt when I turned up for a meeting one month early! Mind you, I do know a former headteacher who sent a colleague on a training course one year late. But I reckon Laura Mckenzie must be a contender for the Guinness Book of Records when it comes to messing things up.

I came across Laura’s story a little while ago. It seems that she stopped her car at a red light somewhere in the Australian outback, and being a very law abiding lady Laura was determined not to move until it changed to green. And that’s where it all went wrong because the light didn’t change. It stayed on red and Laura was finally found two days later, completely dehydrated and slumped across the steering wheel. She had an explanation of course. When she was finally pulled from her car, she told her rescuers that she wasn’t aware the lights were broken and as far as she was concerned she had no option, but to wait for it to change.

People make big mistakes when it comes to Jesus too. Some think He’s a sort of fictional fairy tale character who never really existed while others operate on the understanding that He has no relevance for those who ‘don’t do God.’ And of course there are countless people in Britain who think He has no relevance for our everyday lives. I suppose it only goes to show how mistaken we can be.

Take Jill. Mt wife and I met Jill in Turkey about twenty years ago. She was holidaying with her children and she had a sad tale to tell. Her husband had died very suddenly when they were holidaying in France a year or two before, and this had left them bewildered and bereft. Not least because he had intended becoming a missionary.

But far from being depressed Jill was full of faith and hope and I realised why when she told me the story that she repeated on BBC Songs of Praise a few weeks later. It seems that some time after his death she was sitting beside his grave pondering her future and despairing of her loss when she saw two things in immediate succession.

The first was a rainbow and this reminded her of the Old Testament story of Noah. It reassured her that unlike us God always keeps a promise. And then, to her absolute amazement she suddenly saw a chrysalis transform into a butterfly in front of her eyes.

She told us that this gave her an incredible sense of peace because she recalled the Biblical promise “we shall not all sleep but we shall all be changed, at the last trumpet.” And Jill’s story reminded me that this is what Christianity is all about: God can and will raise the dead on the day Jesus comes back in glory. As one former bishop puts it: “Christians don’t believe in life after death, they believe in life after life after death.”

But I would want to go one step further than that and say Christians believe in life before life after death too because that’s when eternal life begins.

Rob James is a Baptist Pastor broadcaster and writer who currently operates as a church and media consultant for the Evangelical Alliance Wales. He is available for preaching and teaching throughout Wales and can be contacted at [email protected]