No mere trifle
14And the Son of Man must be lifted up, just as that metal snake was lifted up by Moses in the desert. 15Then everyone who has faith in the Son of Man will have eternal life. 16God loved the people of this world so much that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who has faith in him will have eternal life and never really die. 17God did not send his Son into the world to condemn its people. He sent him to save them! 18No one who has faith in God’s Son will be condemned. But everyone who doesn’t have faith in him has already been condemned for not having faith in God’s only Son.
19The light has come into the world, and people who do evil things are judged guilty because they love the dark more than the light. 20People who do evil hate the light and won’t come to the light, because it clearly shows what they have done. 21But everyone who lives by the truth will come to the light, because they want others to know that God is really the one doing what they do.
I promised the Lent house group that is meeting at our house cake, so I thought I’d be the dutiful host and bake some myself. One was fine, the other went crazy! I must have filled it too full, for the mixture rose – and rose – and went over the top, and all over the oven! By this stage, they were not fit to serve to anyone and lay abandoned.
The cakes were found wanting and rejected.
I guess that’s how we feel sometimes. Especially when we take the time to pause and look into our lives.
BUT God does not want to condemn us. He wants to save us.
Yes there are things that we get wrong, and God knows that. But he doesn’t sit there saying, ‘I knew you would come to nothing’, or ‘Now you’ve got something wrong, just clear off, you’re no good to me now.’ He wants to save us.
Yes in the light, we can see the things that are wrong, but in Jesus light and power we also have the way to put them right. If we can see him, we can see God’s love and restoration. It’s only when you know what is wrong that you can begin to get things right.
And in the end, that wasn’t the end of the cake – what was rescued became the base for a trifle – and a very good trifle too, even if I do say so myself! What once seemed a lost cause, unusable for purpose, became usable for some other purpose.
We might get things wrong, God can still use us, he still has a purpose for us. Jesus came, not to throw away, but to rescue. Not to reject us, but to make us something new.
Thank you lord
That when something goes wrong,
it is not the end.
You do not lose interest in us,
walk away,
or condemn us to uselessness;
but you rescue us,
change us,
and fulfil our purpose in us.
Lord may your light shine,
that we might see new possibilities
and walk with you
to them.
Pam's Perambulation 