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Resurrection Community
Dear Friends,
“The Bible is not a script for a funeral service, but it is the record of God always bringing life where we expected to find death. Everywhere is the story of resurrection.” Eugene Peterson
There are times in my Christian life, including my life as a pastor, when I have doubted whether the above quote from Eugene Peterson was really true. “Everywhere is the story of resurrection”? “God always bringing life where we expect to find death”? Surveying my own ongoing struggles with sin, the spiritually stagnant state of churches, and what has felt like “not enough change or growth,” has at times caused me frustration, doubt, and, especially being a pastor, various levels of despair.
Can you identify? Have you ever had cause to look at your own life and struggles and wonder, “Is this it? Will things ever change?” Have you ever reflected on the spiritual health and vitality of the Church and struggled with disappointment or cynicism?
The Bible does promise that we can and should know the reality of the resurrection in our everyday lives, as well as experience it in the community of the church. And, as we have seen in the book of James, the Bible also promises us that we will know ongoing struggles, sickness, sufferings, and frustrations.
So, this Sunday and next week in our Daily Worship Devotions, we consider what James 5:12-20 teaches and promises about the power of the resurrection given the presence of sufferings and struggles.
As you prepare for corporate worship, take some time to read and reflect on God’s Word in James 5:12-20, along with your own expectations and/or frustrations with experiencing the reality of the resurrection. Take these reflections to God and ask him to speak to you – and to us all together. Then, bring your heart, your hopes, your fears, and your longings with you on Sunday as we seek God together.
Yours in Christ,
Pastor Ewan
Relying on God
Friends,
“Twas grace that taught my hear to fear, and grace my fear relieved. How precious did that grace appear, the hour I first believed.”
But I remember the hour I first believed as if it were yesterday, last night even.Pastor Bill was teaching one evening, in a private home, a couples’ Bible Study from the book of Genesis – Genesis 6. It was the story of Noah and the flood.
Suddenly, seeing how God saved Noah and his family was a gracious picture – a video – of how He saves us under His new Covenant through faith in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, His Son. God, the sovereign God of history, used this history to overwhelm me with the grace I needed to receive Him. I was saved; I was justified by faith.
Ever since that night, one-half of my life ago, the history of God working in His people has fascinated me. In graduate school, Church History was my favorite course. Having Dr. John Hanna as my professor helped me immeasurable.
God’s people spent 70 years in exile in Babylon after they did not take God at His Word. They did not trust nor obey Him as He commanded. Habakkuk even told them that He was going to send Nebuchadnezzar, the Babylon, to execute His judgement, and it happened just as He said it would.
Wash Me
Friends,
It’s Thursday of Holy Week. How have you been this week?
- Have you managed to turn your attention, to meditate each day, on the last steps of Jesus on his way to the Cross?
- Or has your week been consumed, distracted, and filled with good, but not great, things?
- Or maybe this has been the opposite of a “holy” week for you, tainted by sin, disappointment, interpersonal conflict, shame, loneliness, frustration, or spiritual isolation?
Regardless of how your week has been, Jesus was faithful – for you. Today, on the Thursday of Holy week, Jesus, knowing what would happen with his disciples, knowing that one would betray him for money, one with curses, and the rest in fear, took a towel today and washed their feet. The Son of God washed the feet of the unfaithful, guilty, deceptive, and boastful.
The disciples struggled to accept this washing. It was culturally wrong, even shameful, for their leader, never mind the Messiah, to be washing their feet. While it was originally a shameful image, the Cross of Christ has become dear to us. Dignified. Powerful. Noble. Yet, the image of Jesus actually washing our feet. It’s too much!
