This is what I wrote for our email newsletter this week. If you like, you can subscribe on the Christ Church website.
The prophet Isaiah brings us an extraordinary promise this week: “Do not remember the former things, or consider the things of old. I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?”
That’s a good reminder and a great promise for all of us. This Christian life is not about celebrating what is past but about the promise of the future. That’s why we do not think about each Sunday or even Holy Week merely as re-enactments of what has happened, but as glimpses of God’s presence with us and the eternal, abundant life to which God calls us.
It’s easy to get lulled into the comfort of the familiar. But the faith we proclaim is vibrant only because those who have gone before us handed on the tradition of a vibrant faith. When we forget the promise of the future, we forget the power of God’s call to us. Thanks be to God that generation upon generation of Christians did not get complacent, but instead practiced a vibrant faith so that they might hand it on to the next generation.
Let us all pray these words from our Collect for the Fifth Sunday in Lent: “Grant [us] grace to love what you command and desire what you promise; that, among the swift and varied changes of the world, our hearts may surely there be fixed where true joys are to be found…”
Come to church this Sunday and celebrate the power of an abundant life in the present — and the promise of a future of unimaginable joy!
