One Saturday night I was watching TV and ironing my church clothes when a commercial came on lauding the awesome wonders of a Sunday edition of a well known paper. Let me paint you a picture; here was a middle aged, middle-to-upper class man and his wife, sitting in a house that I’m supposed to admire with glasses of orange juice and cups of coffee, cuddled up next to each other on their couch and reading the Sunday Times.
“On Sunday” he announced, “there’s nothing I’d rather do than get up early in the morning and pick up my copy of the Sunday Times.” His adoring wife, looking up at him with an admiring gaze chimed in, “that’s because the Sunday Times has everything we need to kick our week off right.”
I was amazed by the declaration that this seemingly nice couple was trying to make. Am I supposed to believe that the most important thing that I can wait for all week is for Sunday to come so that I can read my paper and have a cup of java? Well maybe I’m too young to understand where they’re coming from but I would have to disagree.
What does Sunday mean to you? For most of us, it represents church meetings, lazy afternoons of rest and relaxation, football games, leisurely picnics in the park and softball; all good things to be sure. We work so hard five to six days a week, trying to pay our mortgages, getting the monkey of credit cards of our back, and of course putting gasoline in our gas tanks, that we all need a day in the week were we can just decompress! What is most amazing is that Sunday is His gift to us! And what a gift that God, knowing our weak frame, gave to us. Jesus said, ‘the Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath” (Mark 2:27).
Sounds good to me, but is there more? I would humbly suggest that there is…
This Sunday we will gather to celebrate the Resurrection of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. I’m writing this on the night where we believe that Jesus was having the last supper with his beloved disciples. On that early spring night, He shared the bread which represented His broken flesh, and drank the wine—representing his precious blood—with them. “Do this in remembrance of Me,” He said (Luke 22:19).
Just a few hours after that, He who was the definition of beauty, the source of all that is good and perfect, was handed over to his persecutors and reviled, spat upon, mutilated, and hung upon a cross to die an excruciating and agonizing death.
On that day, “…He hath made Him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him.” (2 Corinthians 5:21).
But, praise be to God, the story doesn’t end there! It doesn’t conclude with a grieving mother, dejected and disillusioned disciples, and Hebrew guards slumbering at the entrance of a closed grave. For on what might have seemed like any given Sunday, while the guards slumbered and the grieving women made their way to the gravesite; while the disciples hid and the rest of the world was unaware the greatest act ever recorded in the history of the world was taking place.
He had told his disciples “These things I have spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world” (John 16:33).
Maybe they forgot.
He had told them clearly, “For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the whale's belly; so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth” (Matthew 12:40).
Perhaps they misunderstood.
They got so caught up with the worries and stresses of this world and of their loss, that they missed the glory of Resurrection day! Somehow the words He had spoken to them week after week, year after year, had escaped their attention and when the trial came they could not muster up the strength in His promises to even begin to consider that maybe, just maybe, He who had raised Lazarus from the grave could possibly do the same for Himself!
It is easy for us to knock the disciples for their lack of faith and belief in Jesus’ Words, but are we really much different? We hear the Word, week by week, and year by year, but do we really believe that he who conquered the grave so many years ago maybe, just maybe, could conquer whatever troubles us today? Have you thought about why we gather for church every Sunday? Why Sunday of all days? Because that Sunday, death was defeated, and the promise of eternal life was sealed as JESUS RESURRECTED FROM THE DEAD!
Indeed every Sunday should be Resurrection Sunday for us!
So as you sit in the pew this Sunday, and every Sunday hereafter, ask the Lord to make it a celebration in your heart of the victory we have in Him. He purchased life for us at a very great cost, and gave it to us for free. Now if that doesn’t beat a crisp early-morning edition of the Times then I don’t know what does!
© 2008 by Jimmy Monreal
Friday, March 21, 2008
Tuesday, March 4, 2008
Our Dwelling Place
“Lord thou hast been our dwelling place in all generations” Psalm 90:1
Every Sunday morning can be the birth place of God’s fresh work upon our lives. Pews are more than wood or metal, foam and upholstery, they are the vehicles by which we get to see and hear the wonders of God. They are the birthing table on which a new generation of believers is born, the high chair where we are fed our first purees of spiritual nourishment, the desk where we learn the principles of kingdom living from our heavenly Teacher, the table where as disciples we break bread with Christ, the hospital bed where we prepare to return to Him. The sanctuary is a cocoon where all of these stages of Christian life take place many times over concurrently…isn’t it beautiful?
Yet sometimes it is easy to forget the miracle that it is that we even gather together to worship our awesome God. Somehow, in the unstopping, demanding, relentless pressure cooker that is our lives, it becomes natural to take our times together for granted. Too often personal disagreements, or petty concerns rip the fabric of the church to such an extent that what was once a beautiful quilt that brought warmth to everything it touched, is tattered, frayed and out of joint—unrecognizable to the world as something that God made. Beyond Jesus’ death and resurrection and His Word, the fabric of the church is relationships. It’s important for our generation and those that are to come that we never forget this.
This past Christmas, I sat at a service at my church and watched a traditional Christmas presentation from our children’s ministry. It was a common enough sight; boys in long colorful robes and head coverings holding walking sticks, little girls in white dresses with wings clipped to their backs, children’s ministry teachers miming hand motions and mouthing Christmas choruses, and proud parents with too many cameras trying to get the perfect (if shaky) shot.
You’ve probably been one of the aforementioned players at one time of your life, I know I have. I’ve been a little shepherd boy, singing the carols (off key) while waving at my parents. And, truth be told, I will probably be one of the proud parents with too many cameras when the time comes. Since it happens every year, it’s easy to become accustomed to the cuteness of the kids and the swooning of the adults; I know it happened to me. Yet, as I watched the presentation that I’ve seen countless times before in its different variations, God made it come to life for me in a new way.
I began to look around the sanctuary and saw excited grandparents, proud parents, mocking teenagers, and shy children—GENERATIONS of people serving Christ! It’s wonderful to think that these children will someday be teenagers mocking the presentations they were part of just a few years ago, the mocking teenagers will be the proud parents with too many cameras, the proud parents will be the grandparents excited to see their grandchildren looking so cute. And what is the common denominator? Christ.
He truly is our dwelling place in all our generations.
So, if God is the dwelling place, what are we? As we come together in the dwelling place and share our lives with each other, each one of us and our generations are the pieces of fabric that alone are plain, but which God sews together to become a beautiful, elaborate patchwork—that quilt that warms everything it touches. We are his church, his beautiful bride which he will one day soon come and receive into His glorious presence. Till then, let us strive to be His hands, His feet, and His voice to a dying world.
Copyright 2008 Jimmy Monreal
Every Sunday morning can be the birth place of God’s fresh work upon our lives. Pews are more than wood or metal, foam and upholstery, they are the vehicles by which we get to see and hear the wonders of God. They are the birthing table on which a new generation of believers is born, the high chair where we are fed our first purees of spiritual nourishment, the desk where we learn the principles of kingdom living from our heavenly Teacher, the table where as disciples we break bread with Christ, the hospital bed where we prepare to return to Him. The sanctuary is a cocoon where all of these stages of Christian life take place many times over concurrently…isn’t it beautiful?
Yet sometimes it is easy to forget the miracle that it is that we even gather together to worship our awesome God. Somehow, in the unstopping, demanding, relentless pressure cooker that is our lives, it becomes natural to take our times together for granted. Too often personal disagreements, or petty concerns rip the fabric of the church to such an extent that what was once a beautiful quilt that brought warmth to everything it touched, is tattered, frayed and out of joint—unrecognizable to the world as something that God made. Beyond Jesus’ death and resurrection and His Word, the fabric of the church is relationships. It’s important for our generation and those that are to come that we never forget this.
This past Christmas, I sat at a service at my church and watched a traditional Christmas presentation from our children’s ministry. It was a common enough sight; boys in long colorful robes and head coverings holding walking sticks, little girls in white dresses with wings clipped to their backs, children’s ministry teachers miming hand motions and mouthing Christmas choruses, and proud parents with too many cameras trying to get the perfect (if shaky) shot.
You’ve probably been one of the aforementioned players at one time of your life, I know I have. I’ve been a little shepherd boy, singing the carols (off key) while waving at my parents. And, truth be told, I will probably be one of the proud parents with too many cameras when the time comes. Since it happens every year, it’s easy to become accustomed to the cuteness of the kids and the swooning of the adults; I know it happened to me. Yet, as I watched the presentation that I’ve seen countless times before in its different variations, God made it come to life for me in a new way.
I began to look around the sanctuary and saw excited grandparents, proud parents, mocking teenagers, and shy children—GENERATIONS of people serving Christ! It’s wonderful to think that these children will someday be teenagers mocking the presentations they were part of just a few years ago, the mocking teenagers will be the proud parents with too many cameras, the proud parents will be the grandparents excited to see their grandchildren looking so cute. And what is the common denominator? Christ.
He truly is our dwelling place in all our generations.
So, if God is the dwelling place, what are we? As we come together in the dwelling place and share our lives with each other, each one of us and our generations are the pieces of fabric that alone are plain, but which God sews together to become a beautiful, elaborate patchwork—that quilt that warms everything it touches. We are his church, his beautiful bride which he will one day soon come and receive into His glorious presence. Till then, let us strive to be His hands, His feet, and His voice to a dying world.
Copyright 2008 Jimmy Monreal
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