Before faith comes we are allowed no freedom by the law.
We were being looked after till faith was revealed.
Before we neither heard nor saw.
In ignorance our fate was sealed.

St Paulinus converted Northumbria by royal marriage.
A mighty kingdom stretching from Firth to Humber.
Beset by strife showing enormous courage.
He built churches and congregations without number.

But one on my heart stands out, in Lincoln a lost church of stone.
Here in ancient Lindsey once he walked.
His work now gone but his memory alone can atone.
From a Bede we know only of his appearance, but his mission was finally balked.

He would have known today’s words of Paul that there are no more distinctions between Jew and Greek, slave and free, male and female.
His work largely lost in Anglo Saxon mist, all that remains a distant echo of his tale.