Christian Comment on behalf of Elstree and Borehamwood Christian Council by REV STEPHEN PURVIS, Church of England team Rector at Holy Cross Church in Balmoral Drive If all goes to plan I hope to spend some time at the beginning of this week in my favourite place.

I hope to visit the Holy Island of Lindisfarne about eight miles south of Berwick-upon-Tweed.

While I am there I hope to sit on the harbour beach among the stones, seaweed, pebbles and sea birds with the sound of the anchored boats hovering in the background.

As I sit on that beach I will handle some of the tide-smoothed pebbles trying to appreciate their various shapes, colours and textures. I will, perhaps, glance momentarily at the fairy-tale-like castle in the background and I will marvel, maybe, at what people can do with skill and imagination when they take such raw materials as ordinary stones and convert them into remarkable buildings.

Today, August 6, is a special day in the Christian Calendar. It marks the occasion when some Christians remember what has come to be called The Transfiguration. This is recorded about half way through the Gospels and marks the time when three of Jesus' closest friends received a vision of who Jesus was. On a mountain top Jesus' appearance was transformed (transfigured) and he was seen talking with Moses, the law-giver, and Elijah, one of the greatest prophets.

When I was at school I loved Geography and I remember being told about metamorphic rock, and how this rock had been transformed by great heat and immense pressure from being ordinary, dull rock to a bright, shiny and crystalline rock. What I find interesting is the fact that the word metamorphic comes from the same Greek word which is used in the Gospels for transfiguration.

Some time after Jesus' earthly life was over, St Paul tells the early Christians that they must be transfigured into the likeness of Jesus. In some ways I guess that if St Paul is taken seriously we can imagine that the closer we come to God in Jesus the more we are likely to be transformed or transfigured -- just like the rock which is subjected to immense heat or pressure.

It's a wonderful image to play around with in our minds as we sit on a Northumbrian beach handling different-shaped dull-looking stones, and then seeing what human beings can do with them when they build such wonderful castles.

But then we must muse over what God can do with them by transforming such rocks by subjecting them to such pressure or heat. When we look at the great saints, what even greater transformation can God achieve when people come really close to him.

This sounds all very well, you might think, but what difference does it make to us today? Well, today, August 6, is also Hiroshima Day and the anniversary of the dropping of the first atom bomb. However justified the dropping of that bomb might or might not have been in military terms, it reminds us about what human beings can do and indeed do do to each other.

People may be able to achieve great architectural, engineering and scientific feats, but unless we are changed, transformed or transfigured people, we can be immensely destructive of each other and the environment in which we live. That castle by the harbour on Holy Island -- beautiful and remarkable as it is -- was built with stone plundered from the nearby abbey ruins when Henry VIII decided to shut down the monasteries in order to give himself greater wealth and power.

Life can be very ambiguous. The coincidence of the transfiguration and Hiroshima Day may be God's way of reminding us that we all need to be transfigured by coming closer to him in our prayers, our worship and the way in which we live. If we doubt that, perhaps we only have to read or watch the news.

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