A flag flying high

I’ve never particularly thought much about flags, and that’s mostly because in the UK where I’ve lived most of my life, you hardly ever see them. Not so in Sweden. Here they love them. In the small village in which I currently live there are more flagpoles and national flags than in a city fifty times its size in England.

The presence of the flag says something, it communicates a pride and a belonging to a people and a nation. Perhaps in the UK that’s not important enough, perhaps in other countries it’s too important. Whatever we think about national or civic pride, as Christians a different banner has been raised and on it is a dead animal. A lamb. Slain. That says something too.