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John 1.6-9 — A witness to the light

March 19, 2020 6 Comments

God in Christ Jesus, didn’t show up in Israel unannounced. Jesus had the prophets who spoke of His coming and he also had a man called John. Some of you may know him as “John the Baptist.”

The Apostle John’s view of the world was one that included the possibility and even the expectation that God might send people to others in order to give them a message. God had not abandoned His Creation. God was still involved. The evidence of the Scripture and of the history of Israel gave witness to the close association of God with their lives.

The very personal and bodily involvement of God in Christ was going to exceed what they expected.

When kings and lords sent messengers, there was an expectation for the messenger and for the people who received the message. The messenger’s task was important — though she or he was not the source of the message, they were to speak faithfully the message and to point to the source of the message. Through their presence and their words the messenger became a witness of the message’s source. The receivers of the messenger were to believe and adjust accordingly.

So it is with John and with Israel and all who resided among her.

6There was a man sent from God whose name was John. 7He came as a witness to testify concerning that light, so that through him all might believe. 8He himself was not the light; he came only as a witness to the light.9The true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world. 

John 1:6-9

We will see more of John the baptist, even in a few verses. But here’s what we must understand about John the Baptist: God sent him. He was a witness. He testified about the light. He was not the light. He came as a witness to Jesus — the true light that gives light to everyone. God sent John so that people might believe. God is a sending God! God expects belief.

Prayer

Heavenly Father, I praise you! You have never abandoned your Creation. You keep sending people to give light to those who walk in darkness. Shed light on who Jesus is for more people in our world today. Keep sending people like John the Baptist to point to Jesus the true light. You desire for people to believe. You desire for people to get out of darkness. Unbelief is evidence of darkness. May those of us who know you be your witness. Light up our world Lord! Light up our hearts and minds Lord! May we testify of your light in our lives. In Jesus Name, Amen.

Journey Through John's Gospel

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John 1:1-5 — Jesus shines

March 18, 2020 0 Comments

The Gospel of Jesus is an announcement, “God reigns.” No matter the darkness of the night, or of our souls, or of the corrupt behaviour infecting our lands. God reigns. The Gospel of Jesus has a historical reach that includes all the time humanity experiences. In fact God has exceeded our imaginations: before Creation the Communion of God existed. All we see in the cosmos has its origin in Him.

The Apostle John has written his book, so “you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may life in his name.” (John 20:31) Let’s read this Gospel with John’s intention: to believe and to receive the life Jesus gives.

1In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2He was with God in the beginning. 3Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. 4In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. 5The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome

John 1:1-5, NIV

This morning I was reading the Prophet Jeremiah in chapters 21-23. Not pleasant. Even Jeremiah himself felt the weight of God’s Word in respect to the days to come. He says, “My heart is broken with in me…” (Jeremiah 23:9) Yet in the midst of God’s judgment on the kings and the prophets, and the people, God offers glimmers of hope.

5“The days are coming,” declares the Lord,“when I will raise up for David a righteous Branch ,a King who will reign wisely and do what is just and right in the land. 6In his days Judah will be saved and Israel will live in safety. This is the name by which he will be called: The Lord Our Righteous Savior.

Jeremiah 23:5-6

If there is darkness; The Lord is still present. If there is light; The Lord is present with us.

This morning I looked through the spaces between my house and our neighbour’s house; this is what I saw:

O wee moon sliver
it’s morning and I see thee.
The Day cometh soon.

In the Gospel of Jesus we have the announcement: we — all people — live now between the Resurrection and the Return of Jesus. His light shines. Generations of people lived between the Creation and The Cross. But we live now between Jesus’– life-death-burial-resurrection-ascension AND His return. We have much in common with people on the “other side of the Cross of Jesus,” including this: the light of God has never, never, never ever stopped shining.

Jesus, Journey Through John's Gospel

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Prayer of the People, 15 March 2020

March 17, 2020 0 Comments

This prayer was shared in our Origin Online worship service on 15 March 2020. As we respond to the Covid-19 situation on our campuses and in our city all Origin Worship Gatherings will be online until further notice. You can watch the service here.

Drawn from Psalm 91.

Heavenly Father,

You are the Almighty, Most High God, and we have chosen to dwell in Your shelter and to rest in Your shadow.  You are our refuge and our fortress, our God, in whom we trust.” By the blood and body of Jesus you have brought us into your Communion — the communion of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Thank you.

And yet this week has given us repeated opportunity to pause, face our mortality, and make choices about our own convenience in relation to others’ wellbeing. The world feels deeply unstable and shaken by a deadly virus. 

So we enter Your presence setting our hope on you. We look to you to save us, knowing others around the world are deeply grieving, more vulnerable, and more anxious. Come Holy Spirit and cover us with Your feathers.

Let us find refuge under Your wings.  We want Your faithfulness to be our shield and rampart.  Lord, help us turn to You in trust when fears in the night, attacks by day, and illness stalks people all around the world. Lord, we trust You, and yet we also need You to help our unbelief, for some of us — worry troubles our thoughts.  Many of us need You to grow our compassion and patience. Work among us Oh Lord.

We receive the ministry of Your messenger to guard us in all our ways;  give wisdom, strength, and encouragement to government officials and medical health officers all around the world as policies of protection are implemented.  Give us wisdom to know how to adjust our lives while choosing to reach out and remain deeply connected.

Lord we love You and we acknowledge Your power.  Please protect and rescue us all; You are our Deliverer. We are calling to You and looking to You for answers.  You are with us in trouble. We recognise in a new way how vulnerable we all are. As we rely on You, make us kind, remind us of people we can call or message, let Your Spirit strengthen us, embolden us, and make us humble to serve.

Please join me in praying the Lord’s prayer.

Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name,
your kingdom come,
your will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us today our daily bread.
And forgive us our debts,
as we also have forgiven our debtors.
And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from the evil one;
for yours is the kingdom,
and the power, and the glory, 
forever. 
Amen.

Prepared by Ellen and Craig O’Brien

Prayer

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anxiety squeezes your mind

March 12, 2020 0 Comments

Here’s a reflection on Covid-19, change, and uncertainty.

When we are anxious or worried our mind is squeezed into a tighter and more narrow view of ourselves and the world. It’s not a comforting hug. It’s a death grip.

You may be feeling squeezed right now by a constant barrage of information and uncertainty. Such anxiety squeezes God out.

Jesus spoke to a crowd of folks who were used to being squeezed by anxiety. He knew he was speaking to many who counted on each day’s work and each day’s decisions in order to make it into the next. The poor make multitudes of decisions everyday, asking themselves questions designed for survival. They are constantly working out opportunity cost. This is how scarcity works.

If I buy this I won’t be able to purchase that.
If I buy this will I have enough at the end of the month?
If I don’t buy this who in my family will miss it?
If we don’t get enough work in this day,
what else will we have to miss out on?
If I don’t get this now it won’t be here for me latter.
What’s going to make me feel better?

The answer to that last question is so important.
When anxiety runs deep it makes all of us poor.

Some of us have become masters of managing scarcity in order to make aspects of our lives work. Students are masters of this with time and their own energy. However, as I also discovered, students are masters of scarcity until they are not! We cannot be in control of everything all the time!

Jesus offers another way through His presence and the promise of His peace. To the anxious His words must have sounded outrageous.

Matthew 6:24-34, NIV

24 “No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.

25 “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? 26Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? 27Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?

28 “And why do you worry about clothes? See how the flowers of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. 29Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. 30If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? 31So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ 32For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. 33But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. 34Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.


Jesus is brilliant.

Jesus knows that when we worry we have settled for a different master than our Heavenly Father. He knows that when we worry we have set our hearts and the issue of our security on other matters. He knows that when we worry we can settle for shortsighted acts of unrighteousness (like hoarding) in order to secure the future for ourselves. He knows that when we worry we are not able to see the opportunity of His Kingdom in each and every day.

Ugh! I write this with compassion for you and for me.

When the world worries are we going to act with love?
When the world worries are we going to live open to Jesus and His Kingdom?
When the world worries will we make adjustments with them and find the opportunity in this moment to love?

You and I can love by taking the advisable precautions.
You and I can love by reaching out to another and listening.
You and I can love by sharing resources from what we have.
You and I can love by praying with another and setting our hearts and lives together before our Heavenly Father.
You and I can love by reading the Word of God together.
You and I can love by setting our hope on Jesus.

The danger before us is not just a matter of what we run out of. The danger before us is a matter of believing we are alone.

Pause. Watch a bird. Look at flower. Locate yourself in this world.

Pray. Enter the embrace of God in His communion — The communion of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Locate yourself in His Communion.

Pastor. Reach out to someone else and invite them into the realities of Jesus’ Kingdom with you. Locate yourself in relation with others.

Change, Society

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Marriage is a crisis

March 11, 2020 0 Comments

Mike Mason has written one of the most powerful and reflective books on marriage: The Mystery of Marriage — As Iron Sharpens Iron. I love his way with language. He plunges into the depths seeking to give words to what happens when a man and a women marry. He writes that marriage is a crisis.

Is it any wonder if some people will do everything in their power to keep love away from them? For we know instinctively that love is like some violent revolutionary, head stuffed with wild dreams instead of brains, a dangerous idealist who would like nothing better than to grab hold of us and shake us right down to our boots, overthrowing all our old ideas and ambition, drastically renovating our hearts from the ground up, filling us with entirely new motives for living. To give into such a force, for one moment, is to be quite, quite swept away. Give love an inch and it will take our whole lives, and it will all happen like lightning, in the twinkling of an eye.

This is what makes marriage such a thrilling enterprise: that it has the power, much more than other more obviously disruptive forces, to change the entire course of a life. Some people go into marriage thinking that they will not have to change much, or perhaps only a little bit along lines that are perfectly foreseeable and within their control. Such people are in for a rough ride. When the terrifying and inexorable process of change sets in, they dig in their heels and refuse to budge, and the ensuing tug-of-war wreaks havoc in every department of their previously comfortable existence.

Marriage, even under the best of circumstances is a crisis–one of the major crisis of life–and it is a dangerous thing not be aware of this. Whether it turns out to be a healthy, challenging, and constructive crisis or a disastrous nightmare depends largely upon how willing the partners are to be changed, how malleable they are. Yet ironically, it is some of the most hardened and crusty and unlikely people in the world who plunge themselves into the arms of marriage and thereby submit in almost total naïveté to the two most transforming powers known to the human heart: the love of another person and the gracious love of God. So be prepared for change! Be prepared for the most sweeping and revolutionary reforms of a lifetime.

Mike Mason, The Mystery of Marriage, p. 60-62.

Quotes, Relationships

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