Dr W.E. Sangster once asked a number of people what was the most awful thing they could think of.

Some said it was their own death. A few said it was the permanent loss of their reason. Others said it was a third world war. Sangster agreed that these were awful possibilities but he claimed there was something even worse than them – atheism! Sheer atheism! The belief that behind this universe there is not the loving Father whom Jesus revealed but some blind impersonal force.

That, said Sangster, is the most awful thing anybody could ever think of: ‘that we do not matter, that we wink out, at the last, like a candle, that all our life ends in a handful of grey ashes’. Such a thought is awful because it is not true. Behind the universe, fallen and cursed because of sin, is a God who cares so much for us that He groans in His love for us and yearns to redeem us. ‘The Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express.’