I had a good birthday yesterday, with lots of messages from friends and family but it started off with a mysterious ‘appointment’ in the diary.

It turned out to be a book consultation with a ‘bibliotherapist’. A local bookshop offers a book subscription service where they ask you about your reading preferences and general interests and likes and dislikes and then, based on what you say, send you a surprise book each month.

How would you describe the books you like? Which is more important to you: plot, character, atmosphere or setting? Are there any books that you love? Any books that you hate? These were hard questions to answer on the spot.

The day before I’d been thinking about a related question: can a sentence sum up an entire book? I wondered this when I spotted a bus hoarding with words from the Bible on it that got me thinking. It was one of those times when something familiar suddenly jumps out in a new way and catches you off guard.

I’m guessing that John 3.16 might be the most famous sentence in the Bible and if a person was going to recognise any bit of the Bible, this would be the part they would know. I’m sure it has informed my own imagination and understanding, but does it sum up the whole story?

John 3:16

For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.

Seeing those words on a bus made me think about them in a new way. Could you read those words and think that following Jesus has nothing to do with dying? Because although Christians believe that God’s love, seen in Jesus, is stronger than death and that life in Jesus includes life forever with God; Jesus also taught that we have to die. (It’s a bit like a seed being buried in the soil, ready to sprout up in the Spring.)

It’s easy for me to forget that God’s love is ‘cross-shaped’. Following Jesus requires small deaths all of the time; dying to pride, to judgement, to selfishness. The way of the cross can be hard and in my 49^th (!) year, it doesn’t feel like it’s getting any easier.

As a recent ‘parkrun’ participant, I asked a triathlete student about ways to make the experience less painful. My heart sunk a bit when Ted said it wouldn’t ever get any easier. ‘Running 5K is just hard’, he said. ‘It will always be hard, but you will get faster.’ I only hope.