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Glencairn Methodist Church |
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Easter - 2011
If you have walked up the Forthriver Road recently you may have noticed the port-a-cabin that has been erected adjacent to St. Andrew’s. Perhaps you have wondered what its purpose is. Some church based groups have recently begun to use it and other uses are being planned for the future. We hope that it will become an important meeting place for many people young and not so young and that the activities within will be expressions of God’s love and concern for the people of Glencairn and beyond. The ground the building is on was previously empty and at best was a place for discarded items but more often a landing place for drifting litter blown down from wherever. Now the ground has a hope filled new future. As if to underscore this point, some beautiful primroses have sprung up alongside the new building. They were not planted as far as I can tell by human hands but we know that nature (wind and birds) can do amazing things through the wonders of God’s glorious creation. A rubbish magnet has now produced colour and fragrance. Some people have asked if they could take some of the delightful yellow flowers home! I was delighted to say “yes“. The death and resurrection details of Jesus Christ have a very similar theme. Jesus was put to death on a cross “outside the city walls”. Golgotha, the place where Jesus was executed, means “the place of the skull”. It was an ugly place at which Jesus met a gruesome death. The rubbish dumps of the day were outside the city walls. It was in such a place that the perfect Son of God was to utter his last cry “it is finished”. The place where the lifeless body of Jesus was laid to rest however was in a tomb in a garden. The world changed that weekend. For as dark and as seemingly pointless was that first Good Friday the first Easter Day was as light filled and eternally hopeful. The garden was where the first followers of Jesus met the risen Lord. Death had been and is forever now defeated. Through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ the waste ground of each human life with all its heartache, mistakes and failures, can find transformation and real newness of life. Yes broken dreams, broken promises and lingering guilt can be lovingly and decisively dealt with. How can this be? Please think carefully about these words from the Bible. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ (2 Corinthians 5:17) If you need to talk about this further please do not hesitate to get in touch with me or a Christian friend or pastor. Happy Easter Scott 24 April 2011
NOTE - Previous "Monthly Messages" are archived at http://glencairn.connor.anglican.org/previousmessages.htm
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