2010 Letter No 08

Each month Bill writes a pastor's letter for our monthly church magazine called 'The Messenger'. Here is the letter for August 2010:

For many in the fellowship recent weeks have been dominated by the frailty of their bodies. Visits to doctors, stays in hospital, struggles to balance medications. And the strains are shared by those who love them and care for them.

We are reminded by these things that we live in a world which is passing away, a world that is in a state of decay. We are part of this world, and so we are also in the same state of decay.

And yet there is more to reality than that. We have a hope, which is rooted in the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. When we are in Christ then we have a stake in God’s new creation – we are a part of the world to come. Frailty, sickness, death and decay do not have the final word. There is an empty tomb and there is a promise that a new heaven and a new earth will come. And in that new creation every tear will be wiped away. Death, mourning, crying and pain will be things of the past. (Rev. 21:4)

But for now, we live in the tension between what is and what is to come. Currently we experience suffering and decay, but one day we will know wholeness and unclouded joy. And even now, in the midst of this present darkness we see glimpses of God’s wonderful light, have foretastes of the banquet which will be, and experience in part the wholeness and joy which are yet to come in all their fulness.

So let us not lose heart. We sometimes see healings, which are signs of the Kingdom that is coming. But we sometimes do not see healings because we do not yet have God’s Kingdom among us in all its fullness. But what Jesus has done for us is sure and certain, and the best is yet to be. So thanks be to God that suffering will end and that if we are in Christ then we are eternally secure.