Thoughts for Sunday morning

Cross, graphite on mylar
©2009, Helen Read

What an amazing thing, the cross of Christ is! I wonder, though, if because we've heard the message over and over again ~ or we've heard it and been put off by the morbidity of it ~ or perhaps never understood it ~ that it could lose its significance?

May that never be!! Understanding the motivation behind it ... A perfectly righteous and just God who is also a God of Love, and a God who has given us and respects our right to choose Him or to turn our backs on Him - that God sees the impossibility of those he has created and loves being able to make our way to him. He, Christ Jesus, trades his life for ours. He takes on the form of humanity - as one of us - yet never shedding his divinity. He speaks and lives God's message of love, and exposes the religiosity of his day as being full of flaws. And then he willingly lays down his life to be the payment for our sins. The story would be incomplete and nothing but tragic if it ended there. No! He conquered death completely. It was not capable of holding Him in its grasp. He rose again and as a result the world and all of eternity is changed forever!

So, what do we do with this story? Its a message that each of us must understand and choose! We can reject it. We can embrace it and accept it with joy. We can be indifferent to it.
For those who reject it, a choice is being made ~ and it is a choice that will follow through eternity... without God and also therefore, without any of the characteristics of God - goodness, love, joy, peace, kindness.
For those who accept it a choice is being made ~ it, too, is a choice that will follow through eternity ... with God, forever redeemed! To live with Him - as one of his beloved - with every attribute of who He is!
But what about those who are indifferent? Or even worse, those who expect God to welcome them because they've tried to fly under the radar? They've never rejected Him openly, but they've never embraced him and accepted His Gift of His death and resurrection for them? Isn't this really the same as rejection ... perhaps not hostile rejection, but an indifferent heart is certainly not one that chooses Him.

Now is the time to walk into his love and accept his gift of Life - for the here and now and for all of eternity! Its what He longs for... its what He traded his life for! He and Life! is only a prayer away!

"To all who receive Him, to those who believe in His name, He gives the
right to become children of God..." John 1:12