Come and join me

•January 18, 2011 • 1 Comment

One of the first memory verses I can remember learning is “At once they left their nets and went with him”.

It comes from this passage (in a different version).

It is the response of the disciples to Jesus’ invitation to join him.

But what strikes me today, is not just the response, but the invitation.

It’s all very carefully made clear that this person, Jesus, is the one who is making God’s promises come true.  He is the one that God has promised to bring his light to the world, and release and relief for the captives.

 

He is the one

and yet…

and yet he invites some ordinary fishermen to come and join him.  To come with him and learn a new task, to bring in people.

 

That blows my mind.  Surely Jesus had the power and the capability to do anything and everything, but he wants people to help him.  Not because he can’t do it, because he wants us to join with him.

Jesus has not come to do the job alone – we are invited to join him.

Come with me and I will teach you how to bring in people

It’s not God doing it, or us doing it, we are doing it together.

God is inviting you to join him in his work – we don’t have to do it alone, but we do have to get up from our nets and go with him.

Come with me…

 

Thank you Lord that you invite us to join in your work.

Help us to leave what we are doing

and follow you.

Equip us for what you call us to

and at all times help us to remember

that it is you we follow

 

Posted in follow, Jesus
Tags: , ,

Light at the end of the tunnel

•January 17, 2011 • Leave a Comment

Apparently the third Monday in January is meant to be the most depressing day of the year.  The theory is that the weather + debt + time since Christmas, combined with failure of new year resolutions all snowballs together with ‘that Monday morning feeling’ and it becomes too much.

Thankfully, not many people take it as far as Brenda Ann Spencer, immortalised by The Boomtown Rats in ‘I don’t like Mondays’ who fired at children playing in a school playground at Cleveland Elementary School in San Diego, California on 29 January 1979.  Her explanation: “I don’t like Mondays; this livens up the day.”

 

There are many who don’t like Mondays and having to get back to routine after the freedom of the weekend, but there are many others for whom life is a much bigger struggle. For those suffer from depression, it is no joke, and life, not just today, can be one black cloud.  For others there is just nothing in their lives that brings any ray of hope.  People are living with hunger, injustice and pain.

It is into this though that God still promises that light WILL come.  One day.  The light is there, whether we can feel it or not.

There are those that subscribe to the belief of, ‘become a Christian and life will run smoothly’.

I’m not one of those – but I do believe that God is there loving us, whether we can feel it or not; he is there holding us, long before we realise; he is holding everything together, when we cannot.  And the light will come.

 

The people who walk in darkness have seen a great light.  It shines on those who live even in the darkest shadows.   Power, pain and abuse will be broken by God, that is his promise.  And I believe that promise.  I believe it for I have found it to be true.  In the depths of the darkness, in the blanket of despair, the light of God is ready to shine.

Sometimes there is nothing else to hold on to

 

Lord

where there is pain

come;

where there is despair

come;

where there is injustice

come;

where there is hatred

come;

where there is darkness

come.

Come,

bring your light

your spark

to places of deep darkness

and long shadow.

Bring light,

bring hope,

bring peace.

Posted in hope, justice
Tags: , , ,

Look at him!

•January 12, 2011 • Leave a Comment

C. S. Lewis said, “Humility is not thinking less of yourself but thinking of yourself less”

John the Baptist had attracted a lot of attention.  People were flocking to him. There were even murmurings that he might be the Messiah, the one who had come to rescue them.  It would have been very easy for him to have become inflated with his own self-importance.

But that is not what happened.  All John wanted to do was to point people to Jesus.  Instead of saying, ‘Look at me and all I’m doing’, he said,

Look at Him.

Moravian Seal, or Agnus Dei, stained glass window in the Rights Chapel at Trinity Moravian Church, Winston-Salem, NC by JJackman
Moravian Seal, or Agnus Dei, stained glass window in the Rights Chapel at Trinity Moravian Church, Winston-Salem, NC by JJackman

Don’t look at me, I’m the messenger.  Look at the one I’ve brought the message about.

What humility.  John realised it was not all about him.  All he wanted to do was point people to Jesus who was the one that would change their lives and the world.

Here he is, look to God.

 

Lord

in all we do,

may we not be wanting people to look at us

and what we are;

May we point always to you

and your ways.

 

 

Posted in Jesus
Tags: , , ,

« Previous Entries
Next Entries »