Oh, how great and wonderful it is that our God is so utterly dependable.  Military might and systems, while admirable and necessary at times, can never quite fit the bill, judicial systems likewise do not always mete our justice, at least, not the way that God does, and even the best, and best intended, of social welfare systems almost inevitably leave people out and fail utterly at times.  Only God can be counted upon, so it is best to go to Him in prayer, and then wait, wait patiently for Him to meet our needs, and our prayer requests, in the manner and timing that is most appropriate.  Thanks be to God that He is there for us in such a wonderful way.

Today’s meditation picks up on what I consider to be a fundamental truth, namely, that God’s purpose and will is restoration, restoring all of us to our proper relationship with Himself, to becoming His own beloved sons and daughters. And so, accordingly, He is always willing to forgive and bring us back to Himself, regardless of what we have said or done. He is always willing to give us a ‘second chance’, or maybe even a third, fourth or more. We see this with Simon Peter in today’s account, and we see something of this ’second chance’ with Barnabas’ acceptance of the rather flawed John Mark. And, as strange as this might seem, I think that Jesus would have done this even with Judas Iscariot, had he trusted in Jesus’ mercy and thrown himself upon His love. Judas was sorry, was remorseful, but put all the blame upon himself. He decided to bear all the consequences of his dastardly dead himself, rather than give them over to Jesus, where they belonged. Peter too was sorry, but it was godly sorrow than the sorrow that leads to death.

And so the amazingly good news is this: we can always come back to God. Thanks be to God. Alleluia.

Continually, day by day and moment by moment, we are faced with choices, and here it is most helpful, and encouraging, to know that Jesus also faced choices, even harder ones than we do, and faced them, albeit successfully, armed with the very same resources as we have.  How good it is to know that--and how encouraging.  Thanks be to God for such an example!

My meditation for today, taking off from Psalm 134, suggests the practice of closing each and every day with prayer of some sort.  While I am certainly aware of the resources found in our various prayer books, for Compline, for instance, I am thinking of something shorter and simpler, something that could, perhaps, even be committed to memory.  I will see what I can come up with.

Psalm 119 is rather long--176 verses in all--but fortunately, it is divided up into eight verse stanzas for easier learning and study.  And, what is more, if we were to know Hebrew, we would discover that it’s an acrostic.  That is, each verse in the stanza begins with the same letter of the Hebrew alphabet, and does so consecutively.  Thus the verses in stanza one all begin with ‘aleph', the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet, stanza two with ‘beth', the second letter, and so on.  This was meant as an aid to knowing and understanding each section, each stanza, and memorizing them.

In today’s reading, the apostle John speaks of ‘the world’ and its values and programs, and speaks of three antidotes to it, namely knowing God, knowing God’s word, and knowing God’s forgiveness.  But then, this poses something of a problem, namely, just how are we to know God’s word, especially when well-meaning, ardent Christians can get radically different things from it?  I would suggest two things, one inward and one outward.  On the inward side, we should really search our heart of hearts and try to identify what our inner biases and beliefs might be, our inner agendas, and see whether they line up with God’s.  (Far too often we can err by taking something that’s a bit iffy and sanctifying it as being from God.).  And, on the outward side, to try to respect the viewpoint of others and listen to what they have to say, to stand where they stand and experience what they have experienced.  (God may indeed be speaking through them and have something there that we need to hear.  And that, can apply to the past as well as to the present.)

Unfortunately, this is something of a journey, a journey that we need to undertake and take part in together.  And sad to say, we won’t all arrive there simultaneously--or soon.  It’s a work in progress.

Jesus certainly doesn’t make things easy for us.  He commands us to love one another, as He has loved us, and then, as if this were not hard or taxing enough, the apostle John tells us that this command applies in particular to our fellow believers, our fellow Christians.  As I have mentioned in my meditation, this is sometimes pretty hard, given that church fights can be pretty nasty, and entrenched opinions and personal agendas can be close to being rock hard, and almost as immovable.  So, it is a mighty and trying task, but seeing as Christ has paved the way, and shown us the way, we can, and should, give it our best.

Today, on the world stage, many people will be remembering the life and ministry of Pope Francis, which raises a very good question, namely what it was the motivated him, gave him the power and the message that he had, and enabled him.  Many would simply offer a glib explanation, something like, ‘oh, of course,  he was a priest’ or ‘he was a man of God’, but what, in reality, does that mean?  What difference did it make in his life?

I ask those questions because they could equally be applied to us, to each one of us: what is it that motivates us or enables us?  Are we simply Christians or 'nice people’--if that is how people see us--but what difference does that make?

Those two apostles, Peter and John, were pretty eloquent in saying that it was Jesus, Jesus crucified, risen and now alive in them, that made the difference.  No wonder they couldn’t help but tell the story.  So, then, what about us?  Is that same story important to us, and if so, why?  And if so, how can we tell it, whether by word or by example, that is, by the way we live?  Something to think about.

There is something very peaceful and calming about spending time on a beach or shoreline in the early morning hours--when the sun is just beginning to rise and the early morning mists have not yet fully lifted or evaporated.  (I remember such a time, not exactly from the beach itself, but higher up--from the Mount of the Beatitudes overlooking the Sea of Galilee.  It was so very peaceful and so very calming.)

So imagine Jesus choosing such a time and place for one of His decisive post-Resurrection encounters with His disciples: what a wonderful time that would have been for the seven of them!  (Especially after all that they have recently been through!)

Now, imagine Jesus coming to us, how He likewise wants to bring peace and calm to our lives, and perhaps all the more so after what we have been through.  Jesus is there for us, meets us there, and wants to feed us, not necessarily with physical food, but with His presence.  Thanks be to God.

A handy resource that many of the mainline churches use is something called the New Revised Common Lectionary.  A lectionary is an ordered set of daily readings designed to help the Bible reader to systematically read through the Bible in some sort of organized fashion and not have to rely on personal whims or preferences, or accident, in choosing a passage.

Sometimes, however, I have serious questions about its choice of what verses to read.  Today, for instance, the appointed reading is Luke 24:36b-48, but for some reason the last verse of that paragraph, verse 49, has been left out.  Not only is this verse an integral part of the paragraph, but is absolutely essential to its overall meaning.  The preceding verses tell us of the necessity of our spreading the Gospel, and verse 49 tells us how.  It is through the work and presence of the Holy Spirit, which the disciples are to wait for there in the city.

Indeed, this is something that we are all called to do as disciples, to share the Good News, by word and example, with those around us.  And surely the Good News of Jesus is something everyone needs to hear.

Today’s Scripture and meditation speak a great deal about sight and seeing correctly and plainly, particularly about Jesus, who He is, and what He does in our lives and the life of the world, but let me suggest yet another tack where this also applies, namely about looking at ourselves, at ourselves correctly and plainly,  and seeing what God has to say about them.   While we might rightly see things that are amiss, that God might want us to deal with and correct, there might well be many things that He is pleased with, and that He wants us to celebrate, rejoice in, and use even more, to His glory and honour.  Yes, to see ourselves as God sees us.

Today’s reading is yet another bit of follow-up to the greatest event of world history, namely the Resurrection.  And here we discover a couple of amazing outcomes of it.  Firstly, its impacts, its promise, is extended to all the peoples of the world, which given the insular character of the Jewish faith up until that point, was quite remarkable.  And secondly, and this is astounding, it is extended even to the people who denied Jesus and were complicit in His death.  As Jesus Himself said from the Cross, “Forgive them, Father, for they know not what they do.”  Forgiving like that, bestowing salvation upon such people as this is clearly alien to the nature of this world, and yet that is exactly what God does.  Wow.

Something that I am always grateful for is something that is a mainstay of our liturgical churches, that is, the church year.  With the church season of Easter, we do not just ‘mention’ the Resurrection in passing, that is, just on Easter Sunday, but continue to celebrate it and its impacts for a full 50 days--until Pentecost, in fact.  That reminds us that the Resurrection is not just a one-time event, but an event that continues to reverberate throughout history and continues to impact each of our lives.  That is because its central premise is that we died with Christ on the Cross and then rose again with Him.  That means that the power of death, sin, shame, guilt and Satan are dead and buried, broken forever.  It means that we can live again in the glorious risen life of our Saviour if we chose to do so.  That said, the choice about whether to let those things remain dead is ours to make, and likewise, whether that resurrected life will be ours as well.  It is us.  Christ has done His work; we need to say ‘yes’, to buy into it.

What a glorious day!  Jesus has been raised from the dead, ‘the first fruits of those who sleep’, meaning that no more shall death reign supreme.  Its power is broken and so too are its associated ‘partners in crime’, sin, shame, guilt and Satan.  Their hold over us is broken, dead and gone in Jesus’ grave, and now, in Christ Jesus, we are alive for evermore.  Today’s Scripture passage from John relates just one set of stories about the resurrected Christ, but all the gospels say the same, “Jesus is alive and is forever more.”  Thanks be to God.

The book of Lamentations from the Hebrew Scriptures as long been a book of the Bible that I largely avoid, given that it is so very dark and so devoid of any hope or resolution.  But then a funeral family suggested that I look at its third chapter, and wow, what a surprise!  In the midst of the desolation and in the midst of Jeremiah’s deep sorrow and grief over what is taking place to his nation and his people, there is this note of hope.  There is a future after all, and there is a God who steadfastly stands in it, ever ready and willing to help those who put their trust in Him.  Such is our God.  Thanks be to God.

Critics and audiences were initially quite mixed in their reception of Mel Gibson’s 1904 movie, “The Passion of the Christ”, both because of its terribly graphic nature and its supposed theology.  And yet, at its time, it was the highest-grossing R rated movie of all time, and actually occasioned the conversion of several of its production crew to the Roman Catholic faith.

But what tremendously impacted me about the movie were two things.  Firstly, there was the terrible suffering and anguish it brought to Mary, the mother of Jesus.  I had never before considered how horrible it must of been for her to witness these things.  No mother should ever have to go through that, I thought.  But, then, there was the other thing, namely the terrible pain and suffering purposely inflected upon Jesus.  I had often visualized it in my mind’s eye, but the movie made it so much more real, so much more graphic.  To think that Jesus, our Lord and Saviour, suffered all this intentionally on our behalf, intentionally simply because He loved us so.  But that is exactly what today, Good Friday, is about, about God’s great love for us.  Let us never forget it.

Today’s passage and meditation touch on something that is rather difficult, rather trying.  Jesus commands us to love, not just in word and intent, but in action.  And so it is to be something that we do and do intentionally and deliberately.  In my growing up years, I came a prayer that read, in part, 'help me to love that other person, even when I don’t like him’.  That brought me up short as I’d always thought of love as an emotion, as a feeling.  But Jesus here was speaking of it as an act of will, as a decision, that is, to will and to want and to work for what is best for that other person.  However, that is quite a difficult road to follow.  Thankfully, we have God’s help in it.

Today’s passage, once again, is one of the Servant Songs from the book of Isaiah and describes the unwavering devotion of that Servant to carrying out God’s will, a will which, by the way, is all for us.  As that Song relates He is there solely to encourage and sustain the weary--that is, us--with the very words of God.  How incredibly good that is!  And, He will not allow anything to deter Him from that task.  And, of course, that Servant is none other than Jesus.  Oh, what a wonderful Saviour He is.  Thanks be to God.