A New Perspective

For the next three months our prayers and reflections from Sanctuary First will try to engage with the significance of the resurrection of Jesus for 21st century people. People who have bills to pay. Relationships to fix. Votes to cast, Dreams to pursue. Families to care for, friends to face and problems galore to solve. In other words most of us who surf the net from time to time looking for some inspiration. The first followers of Jesus had the struggle of making sense of something that went far beyond their everyday experience. The presence of Jesus Christ alive among them after they had seen him crucified. They came to believe that Jesus was the first of God’s prototype, a new man, a new creation that was coming about through the Spirit of God working in the hearts and minds of men and women like themselves who wanted to find a better way to live as individuals and within community. As Christians today we still believe the resurrection invites us to see life from a new perspective inviting us to live out repentance and forgiveness as a sign of the Kingdom of God breaking into our world. This new perspective also inspires us to search for and create new beginnings in our everyday lives. These new beginnings bring us to the place where we understand the resurrection as the pivotal point in world history announcing God’s new world order. If it sounds all too grand, I guess its because it is such an amazing life changing idea. God has started to bring about a new creation beginning in the hearts and lives of mean and women whom many in the past have despised or even disowned. In the 2 letter to the Corinthians 5. 17. Paul says ‘If anyone is in Christ they become a new creation, the old has past and all becomes new.