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TWENTY-FIVE years ago, on 10 April, an agreement was reached to bring an end to the Troubles – the conflict over the status of Northern Ireland that began in the late 1960s and cost thousands of lives.

The Good Friday agreement was a step towards reconciliation between a divided people. The Corrymeela community in Ballycastle, Co Antrim, had been working for reconciliation on the island since 1965 and continues to do so today. Alex Wimberly, the organisation’s leader, says Corrymeela is ‘an ecumenical Christian community which believes that reconciliation is at the heart of the gospel’.

‘Our founder, Ray Davey, said that if churches can’t speak of reconciliation, they have nothing to say,’ he says.

Much of the work of Corrymeela centres on building relationships with others that bridge the differences between them with the aim of fostering reconciliation.

‘People have to take the spirit of courage and hope from the Good Friday agreement,’ Alex says, ‘and realise we can create a future together which is not based on a zerosum game where if somebody wins, somebody else has to lose. We have to find win-win solutions to build a just and lasting peace.’

We can create a future together

To mark the anniversary of the Good Friday agreement, the Corrymeela community is hosting a number of events, including conferences to discuss the future, and a service of recommitment to the underlying principles of the agreement. While Corrymeela does not impose its Christian faith on people, it is at the heart of its mission.

This weekend, Christians everywhere remember the reconciliation at the heart of their faith. They give thanks that, because of Jesus’ death and resurrection, all people can be reconciled to God and find peace and hope for new life in a relationship with him.

Thinking about the Good Friday agreement within the context of Easter and Jesus’ once-for-all sacrifice, Alex says: ‘Judgement was coming for all of us, yet we were spared.

‘The power of the Good Friday agreement in some ways is that we now realise no one needs to die for us to be freed from the sin that divides.’