New Life

Spring's great in all sorts of ways: actual warmth from the sun, lighter mornings and longer evenings, flowers and blossom to cheer up the hedgerows and gardens, renewed birdsong and, of course, free-range hens start laying regularly again. With the current chicken lockdown, 'free-range' is confined at the moment, which is a pity, so they need a bit more company during the day, but ours seem happy enough - lots of eggs being laid in a variety of colours. And what's more, some are about to hatch into fluffy little chicks! It must nearly be Easter.

Daffodils, Easter bunnies and Easter eggs are all cheerful seasonal reminders of creation all around us. Add to that lambing and everywhere seems to be bursting into new life. Maybe there are even babies being born into your family at this time of year. Indeed four of ours arrived between the end of February and early April.

New life, though, quickly turns into older life. As the years go by, what started out fresh and full of hope begins to accumulate problems, defects, mistakes, guilt. There seems to be no turning back to the newness of life and innocence of early childhood. Don't we all sometimes long for that? Lazy, carefree summer days, before we became burdened with the need to earn money and aware of the responsibility for every wrong word that we've uttered or deed that we've performed, all the people we've let down or hurt, all our anger that we now regret, all the times that we could have helped but didn't, all the lies that have led to a tangled web which we would be better off never having spun. The only way out is that we shall finally die. That can become quite a depressing thought in itself, but what if death isn't the end and we carry all our guilt and shame into the next world?

There is, though, a better way out of all this. Jesus offers us new life if we believe in him as the Son of God who came to die on our behalf. If we accept our guilt and ask his forgiveness, then we can receive that new life. It entails giving our lives to him, which is costly, but in return he takes all responsibility for our past failings. All our guilt and shame is removed from us and cast away as far as the East is from the West (Psalm 103, verse 12). We are set free of our past and there is no condemnation for anyone who is in Christ - whatever we've done or said, wherever we've been (Paul's letter to the Romans, chapter 8, verse 1). Becoming a Christian involves a transaction - we give up ownership of our lives and God gives us new ones with a clean start. It's as if we've been born again, with the innocence of early childhood. In fact, that is how Jesus describes it - being born again (John's Gospel, chapter 3, verse 3) - and he tells us that we need to respond to him as children, with a faith that hasn't been dulled by human experience (Mark's Gospel, chapter 10, verse 15).

Becoming a Christian isn't joining a club called church; it isn't agreeing to start living better; it isn't about regularly going to services on a Sunday morning. All these things are good and helpful. However, being a Christian involves giving up your own tainted life and receiving a fresh unstained one in return. It costs everything, but we get everything and more back in return. It's a new life, and God sends his us Holy Spirit to stop us messing this one up like the last one.

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Giving people what they want

Wouldn't it be nice if everyone always gave us what we want? Opening presents at Christmas and on our birthday would be great and there would be no need to hide the disappointment that sometimes tries to creep across our faces when we've just finished eagerly opening a gift from a loved one. No one would be wondering if their present had perhaps not been received with the hoped for enthusiasm, or if the recipient already had one of those, or even felt a little insulted for some undisclosed reason. Of course, Amazon and other online present lists reduce the need for disappointment these days. However, there are many other times when life doesn't deliver what we would like.

God is a big culprit in that. However much we've given our lives to him and perhaps have seen many amazing answers to prayer in the past, he doesn't always respond to us the way we want. Yes, want. I could say 'would like' to soften it a bit, but actually we want. I know there's a lot of talk about asking only for what we need, but actually we do want things from time to time - sometimes quite badly, whether we need them or not. Or course, God could just give them to us, because he loves us. And he loves everyone, doesn't he? So he could give us all what we want.

When Jesus went into the wilderness after his baptism, it seems that he was fairly continually harassed by the devil. He knew that this was a good opportunity to stop Jesus in his mission to defeat him before he'd really got going. After 40 days, we read, Jesus was hungry and the devil tempted him to turn some stones into bread. Jesus would certainly have been physically weak and it was time to break the fast. However, at that point in a fast, hunger is rather different from when you've just missed a meal or two, so the key point being addressed here was not Jesus' appetite for food. He could have broken the fast by creating some bread, but the bigger issue here was using his miraculous powers improperly. He was being tempted to use them for his own ends and set a precedent of doing miracles because he could.

The devil may not have known Jesus' plan for our redemption in detail, but if Jesus could get into the habit of taking shortcuts by doing a miracle or two, then that could make life easier for them both. Jesus had chosen the way of suffering. He was going to attract people to him by telling them to take up their crosses and follow him, that if they followed him there wouldn't necessarily be anywhere to lay their heads at night and that it was quite likely that they would be persecuted. He added a lot more along those lines, but you get the picture. He did heal the sick, out of compassion for them, but what if he did some major public miracles and gave everyone all the food that they all wanted, for ever? "Do away with your hunger, Jesus, and then you can do the same for everyone else and they'll follow you. You don't need to go down the personal sacrifice route."

Sometimes giving everyone what they want isn't a good idea. Jesus chose the route of telling people how life really is rather than candy-coating it.

oFunnily enough, after rejecting this approach at the end of his fast, Jesus did turn water into wine at a wedding, but only the servants and hi mother knew where the wine came from. It wasn't a public display for attention. He also fed two large crowds of 5,000 and 4,000 men plus a lot of women and children, with just a few fish and a small number of loaves of bread. In those cases as well, though, it was only the 12 disciples who actually knew that all the food had been provided miraculously; the crowd just ate what they were given. Jesus did the food multiplication miracles out of compassion for the crowds because they were hungry, it was late and there were no shops around. He did joke the morning after one of these that such a large crowd had turned up because they'd had a good meal the night before - and indeed they'd had all they wanted to eat, but probably at least most of them had no idea that it had been a miracle.

In general, though, Jesus didn't go to the Jews and give them what they wanted. Knowing what we do about those two miracles with bread and fish, we understand that he could have sorted out all hunger problems in the country. We know from the wedding in Cana that he could have added wine to that list! He could have healed everyone, but he did that almost entirely just for those who came to him. He could have set all the prisoners free, at least those unjustly charged, and even overthrown the Government. In fact, many, if not most Jews expected that that was the kind of thing that the Messiah was going to do.

Instead, Jesus attempted to attract a following by telling them that being as righteous as the Pharisees wasn't good enough and that the way forward was one of humbling themselves like servants and children, being self-sacrificial and not looking after their own interests first. In fact he encouraged them not to worry about their own food, drink and shelter but to put their efforts into seeking the Kingdom of God and allowing him to look after them in his own way. In the end it meant that Jesus was ultimately rejected himself and killed in the most cruel way through crucifixion, at which point even his Heavenly Father abandoned him. Wouldn't it have been much easier to have accept the devil's suggestion to do some food miracles and the like, so as to get everyone on his side and worshipping him as their provider? But then they would have been worshipping because they got good meals out of it, rather than developing a relationship with God.

Isn't it sometimes easier for us to going along with the devil's suggestions that we take shortcuts, rather than devoting ourselves to God, spending time getting to know him and obeying him when it's difficult. Yes, it's easier, but let's not do that.

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Now's the time to sow your seeds

In the eighth chapter of his Gospel, Luke recounts a parable that Jesus told about a man sowing seed in a field. There's a good chance that you know this story, because it's one of the most famous in the Bible, but just in case ...

A man sowed high quality seeds and a lot of them fell on good, deep soil, but some were dropped on the path, others fell among weeds and yet more on shallow soil. What was on the path was just eaten up by birds straightaway; that in the shallow earth on the rocky ground grew quickly, but withered and died when the sun became hot; what was trying to grow between the weeds just got overwhelmed by the stronger plants. What landed in the good ground, though, went on to produce a large harvest of much more grain than was planted in the first place.

Do we sometimes not do things because it might not all work out the way we intend? "I'm not planting my seed in that field, because part of it's rocky, there's a big path down the side and there are some patches of weeds." Or, "I'm not using that field until I have an automated device which will identify rocky soil, weeds and paths so that it can drop the seed only in the good soil." We live in the society we do today in the UK because people before us, like Timothy, Titus, Polycarp, Chad and many, many more who are well-known and unheard of, were willing to tell others about Jesus, not knowing what the response would be.

I don't like to think of the gospel as being marketed, because it isn't spread for commercial gain, but the principles are similar. Advertising isn't directed just at those who are going to end up buying the product. People tell their friends about the exciting presents that they've received for their birthday, even though the hearers might not share in that excitement personally, because their interests are very different. Jesus healed ten lepers on one occasion (Luke's Gospel, chapter 17, verses 11-19), but only one came back to say thank you and become one of his followers; he didn't find out which one was going to be greatful in advance and heal just him.

If you're a Christian, the best present that you've ever received is salvation and freedom through the death and resurrection of the Son of God, Jesus. That's pretty exciting and something that you're likely to want to tell people about. But how many Christians do you know and how many have tried to explain to you their excitement about knowing Jesus? God generally doesn't come into our conversations, if most of us are honest about it. Is it because we're not really excited about him, or is it because we'll talk about him when we're in the right environment that has been set up for the purpose? Otherwise we might be intruding into people's lives.

Fortunately for us, that isn't the approach that the evangelists had who first brought the message of the gospel to these isles. Jesus tells us that the seed of the word of God needs to be sown everywhere and where the soil is good it will take root, so the hearer will then produce a good harvest. Where the soil is bad or not ready, nothing much will happen, but that's not our problem. As Paul writes, he sowed and Apollos watered, but it's God who gives the increase (Paul's first letter to the Corinthians, chapter 3, verse 6). The hurting world around us needs to know about Jesus as their saviour, healer and Lord, the Holy Spirit as their companion, teacher, empowerer and comforter, and the Father as their own compassionate and loving Heavenly Father. We have the seeds to sow and the water to nourish them - then God can make them grow.

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