Will Myra Hindley, now that she has died, go to heaven? There’s a question to chew over before breakfast! Certainly her crime, or part in the murders, was one to induce revulsion in the extreme and I am far less prepared to read the details than certain newspapers are to print them. If we could predict who goes up and who goes down, she must surely be one case that requires very little thought.

There is a hymn, written by a blind American woman in the early 1870s, which tackles head on the subject of redemption. The second verse of Frances Alstyne’s hymn ‘To God be the glory’ begins

“O perfect redemption,
the purchase of blood!
to every believer
the promise of God;”

“the vilest offender
who truly believes,
that moment from Jesus
a pardon receives.”

Our gospel reading talked about talents (Matt 25:14-30). It talked about what we do with the grace which God gives us. Do we allow it to work in us and bear fruit or do we dump it in a hole somewhere? Are we truly sorry for the sins that take hold of us and do we seek God’s healing and redeeming presence or do we reject it?

I don’t know what Myra Hindley did with this grace in her 36 years in prison and I don’t presume to pass judgement as revolting as I find her crimes. I do though presume to offer out hope for even the ‘vilest offender’, because that is what redemption is about; it is what God sending his Son to show his love for us means; it is the power of real forgiveness in the face of real sinfulness and true repentance. For that we can join in the chorus of that hymn and “Praise the Lord” for the “great things [God] has done”.

© Ian Black 2002

Home