Monday Morning Mail, 3rd Feb 2014

By -

Loving God | Loving Each Other | Loving our Community

Greetings!

Yesterday in the liturgical calendar was the festival of the Presentation of Christ at the Temple, which we remembered at the 9:15am service.

I love the story of Simeon and Anna in Luke 2. On one level, both Simeon and Anna had immensely dramatic lives. In terms of name recognition, they're better known today than almost anyone else – certainly better known than any politicians or generals except Augustus Caesar. Simeon's words are still remembered across the world.

And yet on another level, both of them lived lives that were almost inconsequential. Both of them are remembered for something that happened near the end of their lives, after decades of waiting. Simeon, we are told, was waiting for the consolation of Israel, and Anna was looking forward to the redemption of Jerusalem. Both of them were longing for God to come and set his people free, for God to bring his salvation and a light that would shine to the very ends of the earth. When Mary and Joseph bring their infant son to the Temple, just a week after that first Christmas, they finally see what they have been longing for, and find the moment of their lives that would go down in history.

Why? Because they met Jesus. Simeon and Anna had been waiting for decades. The Jewish people had been waiting for centuries. And in that moment, as Simeon met the baby Jesus, he saw that all the waiting was worthwhile. He becomes the first person in Luke to point to the cross, and Anna becomes one of the first to tell other people about Jesus.

Simeon and Anna only saw Jesus as a baby, but that was enough to make decades of waiting worthwhile. We often get so fed up of waiting, don't we? But in Jesus, we have far more than was enough to satisfy Simeon and Anna. We know more of the story, we see what God has done through Jesus, and know that he lives in our hearts by his Holy Spirit. We have seen, and known, and shared in God's amazing salvation which he has accomplished to draw all people to himself. How can we not rejoice and tell others!

And when we have to wait, especially waiting for God to act or to show up, let's remember everything he has already done for us, all the blessings we already have in Jesus, all the wonderful things we have to look forwards to in his new creation and that God keeps his promises!

God bless,

John

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Any Questions?

By -
There is one sermon slot free in the Autumn service rota, and I'd like to use it to answer a question that we have about Christianity - a point of doctrine, how to respond in a certain situation, anything along those lines. If you've got any ideas, just post them as comments on this post - completely anonymous!
Read more

Book of the Year?

By -
Image
I read quite a lot of books. The best book I've read this year is probably The Good God by Michael Reeves. It's a book about the Trinity. The big point is that the Trinity is central to understanding who God is, to understanding the difference between Christianity and other religions, and to understanding how we can be saved. Reeves doesn't say anything new, but he explains the theology very accessibly and clearly, quoting and explaining "big name" theologians like Athanasius, Augustine, Luther and Richard of St Victor in a way that is accessible to all, and he does it very well. It would be my top recommendation for anyone wanting to understand the Trinity and why it matters, whether they were a new Christian or training for ordination. My one criticism of the book is it could be very good for ecumenism as well - building links between evangelical theology and the Roman Catholics and Orthodox, but the end lets it down in that sense. Trinitarianism is tru
Read more

Monday Morning Mail, 7th April 2014

By -
Image
Good Morning! Yesterday morning, we looked at John 12:1-11, which is the story of Mary anointing Jesus' feet with perfume that cost a year's wages. We saw that Mary's grateful, responsive, loving, extravagant, disgraceful love was exactly the right response to Jesus, even though it left her with no money, no provision for the future and her reputation in tatters. In contrast, Judas was shown to be hiding his real sin behind trying to look pious. One of the ways we applied it was by thinking about whether we hold back from worshipping God for fear of what other people think, whether that's when singing at church or when speaking to our friends at work or at the pub, or even whether we're sometimes, like Judas, people who sit on the sidelines and snipe at those who are putting their hearts into worshipping God. We also saw how Mary's action predicts what Jesus is about to do – that she becomes the servant who washes Je
Read more