The Glory of Salvation

Among the questions we ask is: why does God not bring all the sufferings of this world to an end RIGHT NOW - assuming he can?

Today at our Fellowship meeting we thought about the words 'NO LONGER', found in many Bible verses.  Including this one in Revelation 22: 

No longer will there be any curse. The throne of God and of the Lamb will be within the city, and His servants will worship Him.

Yes but - why must we wait for that happy day?

In any Lifeboat Station, as in the picture above, a place of honour is given to the record of salvation.  What, after all, is a lifeboat that has never saved?  There is no lifeboat in our back garden pond, and no frightening waves or storms, but there is also no record of salvation there.

The same book of Revelation that reveals the coming day when the curse is no longer also reveals the adoring praise of heaven to the Saviour, the Lamb at the centre of heaven's glory.  His glory is the salvation he has accomplished, the salvation is from the cursed environment of sin.

So the agonies of this world are the backcloth of his glory, a trick pulled by Satan and rebels like me that has backfired to the glory of the God against whom we sinned.  The storm of sin has - and continues to - produce ever more praise to the one whose grace saves human beings from the curse of their own making.

And they sang a new song: "Worthy are You to take the scroll and open its seals, because You were slain, and by Your blood You purchased for God those from every tribe and tongue and people and nation

Easter Weekend translated for cats?

Good Friday

Today I heard again these lines that so profoundly describe the meaning of this day:

From the "Holy, Holy, Holy,

We adore thee, O most high,"

Down to earth's blaspheming voices

And the shout of "Crucify!

Notre Dame et Notre Seigneur

I am not well travelled, but even with my limitations it was not hard to dig into my pictures and find one of a recent (rainy!) visit to Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, one of the most visited tourist sites in the world.

And yesterday France, to its horror, saw a great fire that reduced the great building to what appears little more than a stone shell.  The French President prioritised a site meeting and vowed that it shall be rebuilt.  At first hearing this appears an unlikely ambition for the ultra-secular French Republic - but an icon is an icon.  Hundreds of millions of Euros are already promised for its restoration.

'The World weeps', reads one newspaper headline, thereby conveniently forgetting hundreds of millions of people in the Muslim and the Eastern world who either don't know or certainly don't care that Notre Dame exists.  It is a little hard to imagine the refugee camps along the Turkish border feeling that this morning they have lost something important.

What a contrast there is, this Easter Week, between the way we regard a Christian cultural icon and the way we regard the One that Christianity is all about.

Not for him a nation hanging a tearful head in mourning;

Not for him a National Leader making pledges of restoration;

Not for him a world weeping or a tweet from Rome's Imperial Palace.

Not for him (despite the written appellation the King of the Jews) a declaration that we have all lost a part of us.

A mocking crowd;

A Governor who has washed his hands;

A world that didn't notice;

A man abandoned, betrayed, denied even by his friends - not a part of us, said Peter.

May the flames of the icon, inflame our love for the Saviour to whom, at its best, the icon seeks to point.