A Wake Up Call

This month, the theme we have chosen for Sanctuary First is a call to action. It’s a good theme to have at the beginning of a new year, especially for those of us who are frustrated with the way things are in many of our congregations. Once again the theme is divided into four weekly sections. In the first section we ask how we as a community of God’s people are addressing the needs of the lost and the broken when we are often lost and broken ourselves. We pick up the ideas of Jesus when he asks “how can the blind lead the blind? He adds both will fall into the ditch. Have we fallen into the ditch? In the second week of prayers and meditations we engage with the whole subject of being ready. Jesus told the story about the wise and foolish young women. How easy it is to be complacent in our Christian living. Paul warns us against the temptation of being squeezed into the mould of the world that is all around us. The ultimate Christian challenge is to be ready when Christ calls you by name. Ask yourself if this was your last hour of life would you be happy for the Lord to find you engaged in this activity? The third section of the theme seeks to deal with the personal struggles that we all face in our Christian lives. It particularly invites us to be honest with God and speak about the times when we have felt let down or even over looked. The times when we have been angry with God because the Creator hasn’t answered our prayers or re-engineered time and life to fit in with our plans and our expectations. In week four we will be confronted with the idea of accountability. This is never an easy subject to approach. When it comes to faith issues - the truth is that we often like to write our own rules and make allowances for our own mistakes and faults. We are often more than willing to reinterpret scripture when it suits us. During this week we will think about what it might mean to prepare for a God inspection on our lives. You know a kind of God appraisal. We have them at work. Our schools sometimes have a mock inspection before the real thing. So how would you survive a life inspection?