Dear Friends,

In March, we begin the Season of Lent which gets us ready to walk the way of the Cross and for the events of Jesus’ passion, death and resurrection. Traditionally, it has been a time for fasting and for repentance.

During Lent, we also have an opportunity to reflect on the lives we lead and in particular to look at our spiritual lives and our corporate and personal relationship with Jesus. We might also want to spend time thinking about the way we serve him and how our faith impacts on those around us. The season also symbolises the time when Jesus was tempted for forty days and forty nights in the Judean Wilderness by the Devil, before he began his public ministry.

Part of my own Lenten observance is to think about the meaning of the cross and on the pain and suffering. Jesus went through. In fact, one of my earliest memories of church is as a child of seven being taken into a side room of the church hall, where I would not have to watch a film-strip of the Crucifixion, with the rest of Sunday School. The film strip was just too distressing to watch.

I did not then have any understanding of what was going on. But now, I realise that it was on the cross that Jesus died for me, who when he rose again three days later, enabled my and the rest of humanity’s wrongdoing to be forgiven and our broken relationship with God to be restored, neither of which any of us deserves.  This then lead me into thinking about how much our God must love us to bring such a thing about.  

As I prepare to reflect on the meaning of the cross in the coming weeks and to walk once more with Jesus to Calvary, may none of us lose sight of how much our God loves us and what it cost him to restore our broken relationship with him.

St. John puts it like this: God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. Such is the extent and nature of his love for us.    

God bless,

Andrew