Sunday, and Why We Have Hope

I've just come home from my church's sunrise service on Yellowhill in Stirling; it was a beautiful way to start off Easter Sunday, and it's the first sunrise service I've ever been to. After the service we went back to the church and sat down together to eat bacon rolls and drink juice, tea, and coffee.

I really felt like part of a great community this morning. I felt welcome and loved; I felt like an important part of the Body of Christ and, praise Jesus, that's exactly what I am. I hope that on this Easter Sunday everyone can feel like part of a family, even if that isn't a church family, and for those who don't I hope and pray that God will bring that to you.

However, on the way home, at around 8:00 am, we drove past a girl who was doing what is known as "the walk of shame". She was wearing what I can only assume were last nights clothes and was carrying her shoes; but this wasn't the saddest part. The saddest part was that this girl looked completely heart broken. And I'm not making that up or over emphasising it for some sort of dramatic affect; she genuinely looked incredibly upset as we drove past and she continued to slowly amble on home.

For a long time in my life I felt insignificant. I felt small and alone and like not a single soul in the world cared about me or thought I was worth anything. Last night I was browsing through some photos that a friend had taken on a recent trip to San Francisco and there were some amazing snaps of the Golden Gate Bridge. Suddenly it hit me that even though this bridge is absolutely enormous, in the eyes of Jesus, God, the Creator of the Universe, I am immeasurably more significant than the Golden Gate Bridge will ever be. I am more significant to the Lord than any of these grand statements made by man, I'm more significant than the beasts of the field and the birds of the air that He Himself created.

Jesus died on the cross for all of us, so that we could all understand how significant we are to God. He didn't come for the righteous, those above their station, the strong, the mighty; as it says in the Beatitudes, "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven" (Matt. 5:3), "Blessed are the meek for they will inherit the earth, blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled. " (Matt. 5:5-6). 

And, as Luke puts it perfectly:
"For the Son of Man came to seek and to save what was lost." (Luke 19:10)

However, to return to the girl I talked about above, I think it's easy to just drive past people like this and make sweeping judgements. But I used to drink and party on a regular basis. Fortunately I never did "the walk of shame", I never went home with a guy, but what if I had? Would that mean Jesus would love me any less, would He be angry with me, would He feel less forgiving? No. Not at all. In fact it would break His heart to have seen me in that situation, to be looking for affection and love in one of many places where I would never find it. It would break His heart because He loved me so much that He died for me, and proved to death that even it wasn't strong enough to stand in His way.

My Lord is stronger than death, His love is stronger than any I could find any where else, so why would I try and find that in anything but Him?

These days I sometimes sit and think about how lucky I am to know Jesus, to have chosen to follow Him and allow Him to take control of my life. I have never felt so safe, so worry free, so content. I have my struggles, yes, life as a Christian isn't life lived through rose-tinted glasses, but I always have Jesus to help me, to carry me through the tough times. I was once blind, but now I see, I see what the world is longing for, in fact I have what the world is longing for, because God has given me the ability to have faith in Him; He has given me so many reasons to believe and I'll never stop.

So on this Easter Sunday I hope you can realise your significance. You are loved, you are important, you are more than enough, the Creator of this Universe, our God, the Lord Jesus Christ, wants you to know that.

x

Sunrise over the Ochils on Easter Sunday morning at Yellow Hill, Stirling, Scotland.

Sunday is Coming

It always rains on Good Friday.

Since Easter 2011, God has gotten me through some crazy things. He's led me through my last year of university, He took me half way around the world and back, He's remade me, changed me, grown me, He's slowly making me into the person I'm meant to be.

But Good Friday isn't about me. Good Friday is about the day that my Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ, allowed Himself to be covered in sin so that every single person who steps foot upon this planet for even the smallest period of time could be forgiven and loved by our Creator. 

Jesus walked the Via Dolorosa, too weak to carry His own cross after having been beaten and whipped by the Roman soldiers. He could have had this pain taken away, He could have asked His Father God to do it differently but the night before, in the Garden of Gethsemane, He prayed, “Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will, but yours be done.” (Luke, 22:42) He was so worried, so nervous, so stressed out that He actually sweat blood.


I think that we sometimes forget how human Jesus was; He may have been God but He was also man, and He was terrified to die. 


Jesus' death on the cross is so much bigger than my little worries, so much bigger than my dissertation, or my post-university plans, or what I'm having for dinner tonight. Jesus cares about these things, He cares that I try my best, and that I don't become a bum, and that I eat, because He knows these things are important to this world; but most of all His death means that I don't need to worry, that I don't need to stress about anything because His resurrection on Sunday means that He's in control, He's got this; not even death can stand in His way.


His resurrection means that no one needs to worry, not a single soul; if You just trust in Him He'll take control of everything. And once You take hold of Him, He'll never let go of you.

Like I said at the start, it always rains on Good Friday... but on Sunday, the Son's going to come out... See what I did there?


x

Christ is Risen!!! Alleluja!

I can't even begin to imagine how Mary felt when she discovered Jesus had been resurrected. After an intense crucifixion - darkness covering the land, shaking of the earth, and the temple curtain torn in two - surely this wasn't over?

It wasn't. 
Oh, man, how it wasn't over!

It's not Easter yet. In fact, it's around a month until Easter. But I wanted to write about it because, never mind the fact that it's my favourite day of the year, it is probably the most important day of the year for Christians (other than Christmas).

When God witnessed the fall of man He was deeply moved by our pain; He was deeply moved by the brokenness it caused. All throughout the Old Testament God constantly reminds His people of the new covenant, we can search its pages and discover prophecy after prophecy, promises that someone was coming to give us hope, a second chance at life, a chance at forgiveness and so we could know our Maker.

I can't get over the beauty of that, of who Jesus is.

Picture this: A Father, Creator God, has a Son. This Son is so precious to Him, He loves Him more than I have the words to explain, He is a part of Him. However, the Father also has a few other children. Well, billions of them. He created them with His hands, He knows each one of them by name, He numbered each hair on their head (Matt. 10:29-31), He loves them insanely, He wants to be loved by them. But they've gone a bit off track. They took things into their own hands, told their Father to get lost and set off on their own. But the Father knows He has to save them, He has to bring them back to Him because they're not safe without Him.

However, there's this guy called Satan who's pretty good at leading God's children astray. God knows that until Satan gets something He wants, he's going to keep leading the children astray. He's going to keep guiding them down dark paths, subjecting them to pain and laughing in their faces and saying "I told you so!" So the Father decides that the best thing He can do is sacrifice a part of Himself, the one thing He loves the most, to Satan so he'll give up. So the Father sends the Son to be with the children and, after a period of time of getting to know the children, of telling them about the Father and showing them how great and powerful and loving He is, the Father tells the Son that it's time. It's time to be a living sacrifice in the place of the children so Satan will give up. The Son cries out to the Father, He is so afraid that His sweat turns to blood, but still He says, "Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will, but yours be done." (Luke 22:42)

The Son is whipped and beaten, He is mocked by the people who follow Satan because they have no idea who He is, He is the Son of God, Creator of the Heavens and the Earth. The Son doesn't turn and run because He is of the Father, His heart is full of compassion for His people, He knows this needs to happen to stop Satan. The Son, after He had been beaten, was too weak to carry the cross that He was to be crucified on, so they gave it to a man called Simon of Cyrene to carry it to Golgotha (taken from the original Aramaic, meaning "skull"). And, upon that cross, the Creator of the entire universe was cruficied for the sins of His people.

But it wasn't over.

Darkness covered the land from the sixth to the ninth hour and at 3:00 pm Jesus cried out "Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachtani?" ("My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?") At that moment the temple curtain tore in two, the earth shook and the dead were resurrected from their graves! "When the centurion and those with him who were guarding Jesus saw the earthquake and all that had happened, they were terrified and exclaimed, 'Surely He was the Son of God!'" (Matt.27:54) 

Jesus, the Son, was buried in a tomb. A massive stone was rolled in front of it and a Roman guard was stationed there at all times so no one could steal His body. But, the next morning, when Mary came to the garden the stone had been rolled away and there was a man walking in the garden. Mary thought He was just the gardner but this was no ordinary man.

This was Jesus Christ, the Son of God, resurrected from the dead, completely alive!

On that day Satan learnt that He had no power over the Father and His children. He learnt that as long as the children choose the Father, His light will always be there to guide them, even on the darkest, rockiest roads. The Father knew the whole time that His Son would be safe, that He wouldn't die and dissappear forever; He also knew that Satan didn't realise this.

And when God's children saw what He had done for them it made them realise, it made us realise, it made me realise, that God loves me so much. He loves me more than I could ever imagine. He sent his precious Son, His child, to die for me. He allowed Him to be whipped and beaten and mocked so I could get a second chance, so Satan would have no grip on me. And God felt all the pain that Jesus felt because He is a part of Him. For the Father to see his Son treated this way was like any loving parent seeing their children attacked, God would have stepped in and stopped it but He knew He had to do this to save His creation.

And because Jesus did this, just like the prodigal son (Luke 15:11-32) returned to his father, we can now return to our Father, our Lord and Saviour, our Maker, God.