The Church by the Bridge - 100 Years of Good News
Learning is a funny thing: the more miles we have on the ‘life clock’, the more we realise how little we actually know – and we need to learn more. The wonderful thing about acknowledging that we are lifelong learners is that we…carry on learning. We learn things that we did not know, we learn things again that we might have been aware of but forgotten, we might learn more on a topic or subject we thought we knew quite a lot about already. Sometimes we learn wonderful ‘stuff’ that does not matter in our everyday life but just puts us in awe. An example of this is learning that no two grains of sand are identical even though we seem to have 5 sextillion grains of sand on earth – and we learn that 5 sextillions have 21 zeros behind the 5!
The disciples and followers of Jesus were also lifelong learners. They immediately, and by choice, followed the call of Jesus to follow him, even though they initially might not have known much about God and even though some of them probably did attend church (in their case synagogue) regularly.
Being with Jesus for three years, listening to him, watching him, seeing him in ‘action’ i.e. reaching out to people, teaching, healing, forgiving, caring whilst constantly pointing to God the Father must have been hugely exciting and probably also very bewildering for the disciples.
Exam week of this three-year apprenticeship the disciples had worked through arrived at the first Easter week. Their eyes were fully opened, and from there they proclaimed the Good News to all the known world. They had finished the theoretical learning and were about to embark on the practical living-by-faith learning.
Reading and praying through the current 30-day prayer guide some of us are doing strikes me like one of those learning experiences.
Our departure point might be that we think we know much of what there is to know about Christian living. Yet when we read this this little booklet and how believers from other cultures live out their faith, we realise how big and how diverse God’s created world and its people actually are –all different like the sand grains, yet all made in the image of God.
We learn from sisters and brothers in Christ who often live a very humble life yet can teach us a thing or two about relying and focusing on God in everything we do.
They can teach us how, when all else is stripped away, only God is left. And it is from this place that they then share the wonder of their faith with their families, friends, neighbours and strangers, knowing of the possible consequences.
We can learn what it means to take seriously God’s promises such as this one from Paul’s letter to the Philippian church: ‘Don’t worry about anything; instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank him for all he has done. Then you will experience God’s peace, which exceeds anything we can understand. His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus.' (Philippians 4:6,7 NLT)’
May His peace be with you this week as we learn to trust Him more and more.
Kai