By the time you read this we will be in the Christian season of Lent. For those who are unaware, Lent is a season of forty days, not counting Sundays, which begins on Ash Wednesday and ends on the Saturday of the Easter weekend. The forty days represents the time Jesus spent in the wilderness and traditionally is used for self-examination and reflection. I like to use it to consider afresh the significance of the Easter events and be reminded of God’s mercy and grace demonstrated in Jesus.
Somehow in the hustle and bustle of life, bombarded by constant reminders that life is chaotic and the world is disturbing, it is necessary to pause and consider Who God is, what God has done and is doing.
Allow me to remind you a little of the story, the Bible story we continue to live:
- When God created the world and put Adam and Eve within it he declared it was “very good”.
- When Adam and Eve rebelled against God, bringing sin and death into the world, the effects of which still seem to dominate, God was not phased, nor defeated – but already had a plan.
- That plan included the setting apart of a peculiar people. While they failed to fulfil their mission, God was not perturbed, because in Jesus it was fully accomplished.
- Sin defeated, evil overcome, the world on a path toward restoration, and humanity enabled to be reconciled – to each other and to God.
- And now, we the followers of Jesus, have become God’s peculiar people. Called and equipped by His Spirit to live out this His mission in His world. Calling people to receive His gift of life and modelling what it is to truly live as His beloved children.
- Confident that soon, very soon, He will come again to make all things new and bring to fulfilment what He has been doing since the dawn of time.
This brief snapshot cannot do justice to the incredible Drama of Scripture into which we are invited. But perhaps is a good place to begin if we are to take some time over Lent to ponder the significant and transformational events of Easter and what this means as we live as followers of Jesus in Australia today?
