Thought for the Week - 11/4/2021

Dear Friends, 

As we journey through this Easter season, I wonder if you can sum up in a few words why Easter is so special to you? If you only had, like some of those online forms that we sometimes get, a certain number of characters to say something, what would you include and what might you leave out? In the book, One Body in Christ, the history and significance of the Evangelical Alliance, I was reminded of the ‘March for Jesus’ initiative of the 1980s and 1990s and the involvement of the song writer Graham Kendrick. One of the songs that came out of this period was The Servant King which, perhaps would use more words on our online form than we were allowed, does encapsulate the meaning of Easter. It is that the second person of the Trinity, God's Son, Jesus Christ, came, his ‘glory veiled’, to give his ‘life that we might live’. It is that he chose to bear our ‘heavy load’, the weight of sin of which we could not be freed from in any other way. It is that ‘cruel nails’ pierced the ‘hands that flung stars into space’ leaving ‘scars that speak of sacrifice’. It is a story which shows us how we are to take on ‘service’, serving others and serving Christ, following his path and ‘bringing our lives as a daily offering of worship to the Servant King’. As I continue to reflect upon the Easter story, I realise that this sinner saved by the grace of God in Jesus Christ through faith, still has a long way to travel in following Jesus. But because of the love of God, as for us all, we can keep on travelling this journey of faith so that we might become more and more like Jesus in our daily lives.

Grace and peace,

Neil              

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