ISN’T it amazing how road works and building sites can cause chaos on our already congested roads?

Last week my wife and I spent a few days in London and with all the new tower blocks being built and with the Cross Rail work going on, it was quite something to get from one place to another.

I have never seen so many eight wheeled tipper lorries racing through the city. There were almost as many of them as there were buses and cabs.

This time we saw many new sights along with those we had seen many times before, but to me the most striking was the sea of red poppies around the moat of the Tower of London. Eight hundred and eighty eight thousand, two hundred and forty six in total, one for each life lost in the 1st World War. That last sentence can just roll off the tongue but to actually see that many is absolutely staggering.

With the memories of the two world wars and the present conflicts, humanity never seems to learn the lesson of the futility of war.

Today, listen or watch every news bulletin and it will always mention some conflict in one part of the world or another. Thousands of needless lives being lost daily.

When Jesus Christ told his disciples about his second coming, he said that there would be “Nations rising against nation and kingdom against kingdom. There will be famines and earthquakes in various places, before that day arrives.”

There is no doubt that Jesus Christ will return and take the Christian Church back to heaven with him.

No one knows when that will be. Jesus, himself, doesn’t know that day, only God the Father knows that, but Jesus told us to be ready.

The simple question is, “Are we ready?’

REV RALPH BOLLAND,

Secretary of Churches Together in Evesham & District.