Midweek Message - Wednesday April 8th
Imagine seeing a toddler confronted with a 2-metre-deep
swimming pool and they are told to get across it. They can’t swim and are,
therefore, frightened and fearful – indeed, totally incapable. If they even
step into the pool that will be the end of the toddler.
However, having stepped away from the swimming pool, you
return 5 minutes later, and you cannot believe what you are seeing. This
toddler is moving through the swimming pool. You can’t see their feet. You
can’t see them from the waist down, but the toddler is moving through the
water. It’s impossible. How can this be?
But then you take a closer look and realise that hidden from
your sight, totally submerged in the water but directly underneath the toddler
and carrying them on their shoulders, is this toddler’s father. That’s why this
toddler is moving through the water. That is why this toddler is going to make
it to the other side: they are being carried on the shoulders of a larger,
stronger other.
As we make our way through Holy Week, heading for Good
Friday and Easter Sunday, this, for me, is a wonderful picture of what Jesus has
done for us and will do for us. At his birth Jesus, the eternal and infinite
Son of God, took upon himself our humanity. Now, at the end of his life and
according to the loving and saving purpose of God the Father, he chooses to
submerge himself under the waters of death – a death on the cross in which he
bears the dreadful consequences of all our wrongdoing & rebellion against
our Maker – only, on Easter Sunday, to come out the other side of death, as he rises from the grave, never to
die again. And all that, so that we, trusting and relying on him, sitting by
faith on his shoulders, may be carried through whatever life may bring us ,
through ultimately what death will bring us - through all of that to the other
side to take our place with him in God’s eternal home.
These are testing days for all of us. It may feel much less
like a swimming pool, much more like a stormy ocean that we find ourselves having
to cross as we navigate all that Covid-19 has brought & threatens to bring to
our lives. Nevertheless, when you consider all that Jesus endured on his way to
the cross and especially in the cross itself – when you consider all that he triumphed over as he emerged from the tomb and ascended into heaven, it demonstrates
his shoulders are strong! Strong enough to support the youngest, the weakest,
the frailest of believers. Strong enough to keep our head above the stormiest
of waters. He is more than able to bring us home.
Remember in that first Holy Week, his words in the Upper
Room to his fearful disciples,
‘Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God. Trust also in me’ (John
14.1)
Remember, too, the opening question and answer in the New
City Catechism:
Q: What is our only hope in life and death?
A: That we are not our own, but belong, body and soul, to
God and to our Saviour, Jesus Christ. (Listen to a recently published song based on these words here)
PS Remember, if you are able, praying on Wednesday at 7pm for 7 people for 7 minutes
PS Remember, if you are able, praying on Wednesday at 7pm for 7 people for 7 minutes
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