April showers bring forth May flowers. That old saying may be true, but this year we might say March chills bring forth April bills!
For some, the Chancellor’s latest proposals on benefits is causing some controversy. How will the bills get paid? Coldest Easter Day ever, my paper said. Electricity, gas and oil costs are all set to rise it seems. Everyone has to deal with day to day living no matter what our financial
position in life is.
Christians, of course, are not immune to the pressures of daily living in a hum drum sinful world. Whether it’s inclemency of weather, in-convenience of ill health, impoverishment in living standards etc. we may be tested as much as, if not more than, non Christians. But then, disciples of Jesus must face other pressures – the temptation to give up, to drift from following the Lord, perhaps ridicule from those around us, and in many countries outright opposition from
those of other religions or none.
It’s interesting that the Lord Jesus, in his amazing prayer in John 17, clarified to his Father what it was he was not praying for. He said:
“My prayer is not that you take them out of the world
but that you protect them from the evil one
(v15)”
Now, clearly although Jesus was praying particularly for his then disciples, it was not that they would never leave this world – they obviously later did, and mostly as martyrs. Rather it was that God would not whisk them out of the world as soon as Jesus had returned to his Father – after all Jesus had just sent them into the world to be witnesses for him and the Gospel. They had work to do for him and needed God’s protection from the evil counter work of Satan who
would try, as he had during Christ’s presence in the world, to destroy them and their witness. Thus, we too can take that prayer as including us in 2013—God hasn’t seen fit to take us from this world for the time being, but has work for us to do to be witnesses for him and to bring the
glorious light and warmth of the gospel into people’s lives around us—people who are struggling not just with the rigours of life generally, but with the grip of Satan in their hearts.
Remember Narnia – where it was always winter until Aslan came? Perhaps the present chilly weather should remind us that there are many around us for whom, spiritually, it’s always winter.
“When our hearts are wintry, grieving or in pain,
Thy touch can call us back to life again;
Fields of our hearts that dead and bare have
been, Love is come again, like wheat that springeth
green.” J M Campbell Crum
Steve Piggott
Elder
April 2013
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