Life is for giving by Stewart Perry
If you missed it, last week we had Bishop John with us for our 2 Sunday morning services. This wasn’t an “official visit” as he was beginning his 3rd walk from Gold Coast to Brisbane during Holy Week. At the end of our 2nd service, he looked at me with a smile and said “and people say the church is dying… it’s not”. There is life in us as a community, there is life in the church… and so there should be, Jesus is alive & the church should be alive.
As we approach this holy moment with the celebration of the great festival of Easter, I wonder what you find life giving and life bringing? Life isn’t just receiving, life is as much, if not more about giving. As it is with the human body, of we just keep taking food and not doing anything with our bodies, we might seem comfortable for the moment but pretty soon we’ll become bloated and lethargic and our energy levels will drop. But if we take in to give out, then our energy levels rise, our health and fitness improves. So it is with our spiritual lives.
I do pray that you are profoundly impacted by the Easter experience you have, whether it be in our church community at Robina or in other communities if you are traveling or visiting, or just spending time with family or quietly reflecting by yourself. I do pray, however, that in our awareness of the profound impact of these days, we might also have an awareness of how God is breathing life into us, so we might breathe life into others.
For Jesus to breathe life into us, it was costly… the ultimate cost, his very life. For us to breathe life into others it will be costly for us as well, but the small cost we can easily pay is to take the focus and spotlight of ourselves and start to point it outwards to see what God is doing and what God would have us do in the world.
There is life in our church because there is life in you. There is life in you because Jesus is alive in you. So let’s, as the young people say these days, “live our best lives”. Our best lives in the kingdom of God won’t be doing what we want, when we want, and what makes us feel good. Our best lives are living life for the benefit of others, it’s receiving life so we can give it, it’s breathing in so we can breathe out.
Happy Easter. Might we be holy and humble.