PEACE HAS COME
This Christmas I pray that you are inspired by the message of Jesus, a message of Good Hope to the divorcee, to the suicidal, the addicted, to the outcast, to the marginalised, to the abused and even for those for whom it would seem like all is well in the world. Jesus came for everyone.
Isaiah 9:6
For to us a child is born,
to us a son is given;
and the government shall be upon his shoulder,
and his name shall be called
Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,
Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
The Prince of Peace, Peace has come.
This past week leading up to Christmas I have been reflecting on a lady that I led to the Lord while visiting St George’s Cathedral in Cape Town, South Africa.
As I was kneeling in the front of the Cathedral to pray a lady came and stood next to me, looked at me and then proceeded to get on her knees. I could sense that she wasn’t used to praying but I was not ready for the beautiful encounter with Jesus that would follow. I turned to her and immediately became so overcome with Love from the father for her that I felt deeply moved with emotion. In the midst of this stirring of love I felt the Holy Spirit show me insight into what is going on in her life, the abusive relationship she just got out of after her divorce, the pain she is experiencing as both her mother and sister is dying from Cancer, the deep heaviness that she is carrying alongside thoughts of suicide and a sense of needing to go on for the sake of her little daughter. I then felt the Spirit say that he wants to lead her into His “unforced rhythms of Grace”.
Completely shocked at what I was experiencing I proceeded to tell her all about how Jesus loves her, how He sees her, how He knows what she is going through and then told her all that I was shown. As I am sharing this she started crying, the burden of the suffering was heavy on her. I got out my phone and read Matthew 11 from the Message to her and told her all about what Jesus did on the cross and that he wants to take this heaviness off her and give her a peace from which she will find freedom. After a moment of her just crying she looked up at me with this wonder in her eye and said: “I want to know this Jesus that cares for me so well”. I proceeded to lead her into a prayer of forgiveness and asked the Holy Spirit to come and breathe new life into her and for Jesus to come and lift this burden off her. Immediately her countenance changed, she looked happier, she was breathing deeply and said: “what is this lightness I am feeling, what is this peace inside of me”. Such a beautiful encounter with the Prince of Peace. A lady from Australia, having never set foot in a church wakes up that morning with a sense of urgency that she needs to find a church, gets into a taxi and the taxi drives her to the Cathedral where she walks in and sees me kneeling and in front of the altar, decided to just imitate what she sees me doing and sitting on the steps in front of the altar she encounters and received the greatest gift you could ever receive, the Prince of Peace.
How beautiful is this gift we get to celebrate this Christmas? The Birth the Jesus, God coming into man, not just knowing man and our suffering from afar, but assuming our humanity he took onto himself all the hardships of humanity by becoming a baby. The creator, vulnerable and dependant on His Creation. Man touching God. It was the birth of this baby, the manifestation of a peace which destroys chaos, that aligned man back with God and declared to all that is not as it should be in creation that its restoration is afoot. This baby, the perfect expression of Gods love.
This Christmas I pray that you are inspired by the message of Jesus, a message of Good Hope to the divorcee, to the suicidal, the addicted, to the outcast, to the marginalised, to the abused and even for those for whom it would seem like all is well in the world. Jesus came for everyone.
Merry Christmas
PEACE HAS COME
We need to understand this.
What is one word that can conjure up a deep feeling of longing and simultaneously feelings of dread? A word that encompasses a unifying ideal yet the very thing that we often find ourselves feeling indifferent about.
What is one word that can conjure up a deep feeling of longing and simultaneously feelings of dread? A word that encompasses a unifying ideal yet the very thing that we often find ourselves feeling indifferent about.
It is a buzzword that seems to be thrown around way too often and is everywhere nowadays. Community.
From your local community, your church community, to your “Facebook community”. At the time I am writing this I am even a member of a religious community on retreat at a Benedictine monastery, another religious community. It is something I can’t seem to run away from as a Christian nowadays.
Community is more than just a buzzword. It is in a very real way a unifying ideal that, no matter what you believe about it, you know you need.
The world we live in is getting more and more connected, yet people are feeling more lonely than ever. Being lonely is a major issue our society is facing. Some studies have shown that loneliness increases mortality risk by 26% putting it on par with obesity and substance abuse.
We know what we are longing for, yet why is this very thing that is spoken about and idolised so much the very thing as a society we are struggling to deal with.
From my own experience, I have found that in the past I wanted my ideal of community without the process required to attain it. Community takes work. It takes intentionality. It’s a slow process, but the problem is that slow isn’t really that popular these days. In a world of Online shopping same-day delivery, instant messaging and fast food; slow seems outdated. It is our communal laziness and failure to see the value of community that stops us from genuinely pursuing it. Sometimes though our apathy towards it isn’t laziness but a genuine pain we experience from past hurts. And instead of opening up to others to allow healing, we isolate ourselves in an attempt to fight off this vain ideal and we formulate our own alternative communal models yet we never pursue them.
In a world that is telling you to be self-focused, the idea of pursuing something that requires you to turn to other people and become “other-centred” seems foreign and out of place. Being other-centred isn’t easy. It takes mindfulness and can only come from a genuine overflow of the heart.
It requires you to show up. It requires you to commit to other people and sometimes it means rearranging your life. Community gives you the responsibility to look outwards. But at the end of the day, you find something that is worth paying a price for.
Community is where we are challenged to be more like Jesus. It’s easy to be the most patient, loving and selfless person when you have only yourself to deal with, however, it is within a community that you are refined as a follower of Christ.
the Book of Hebrews has this to say about it:
“And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near.”
It is a command from our Lord to love one another, but sometimes we can swing so far towards other-mindedness that we lose sight that the same command for me to love another is the command for me to be loved by another. Community is the place where this happens.
Community is an ideal, yes, but we cannot allow it to become such an ideal that our dream of the destination cripples us with fear to embark on the very journey that leads to that destination.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote, “The person who loves their dream of community will destroy community, but the person who loves those around them will create community.”
The intentionality that is needed to form good community might take some perseverance, but not nearly as much perseverance as waiting and hoping for our ideals to show up at our front door alongside our same day deliveries.