Where is Jesus Now ?

This week we looked back to the story of Jesus' Ascension in Luke 24 and asked where Jesus is for us.    For his contemporaries, Jesus had returned "up there" to God and the cloud in the story is a symbol of God's presence as it is in the story of the exodus in the Hebrew Bible.  For us, as a number of you said, Jesus is with us in the midst of our daily lives, and in those whom  we meet in the course of our day.   The BBC mini-series "The Passion" broadcast a few years ago very powerfully and effectively ended with Jesus walking away from the disciples and just disappearing into the crowd ... which is where he is today.  

This Sunday also marked the end of this year's Christian Aid Week.   Here too is where we meet Jesus today and thanks to Pauline's prayer activities we were able to actively engage in learning about and praying for the work of Christian Aid throughout the world.

Thank you to everyone who contributed to the morning.

Peter King

John 15: 9 - 17

MISSION!, was the watchword  for Sunday’s talk: in the gospel reading Jesus said that we had been chosen – not for our own sakes or even for each other – but that we were to go out and bear fruit that would last.  The reading challenged us and we moved our thinking outside the boxes to stop ourselves from navel gazing, and to think community/country/global.  As William Temple wrote  last Century – “The Church is the only organisation that exists for the benefit of its non-members”. We certainly grabbed hold of those thoughts and are asking Jesus to show us how He wants us to do that, for as you know, we all have a task that’s specially tailored! One of our younger members (only 9 years old) had thought about this already, and that morning after spending all day Saturday baking, held a cake sale to raise money for a deprived school in Nairobi. She raised over £18 on the day – so that’s a very big ‘well done’ to her.

Accompanying this we sang: I am the Vine; Jesus, be the Centre; I will offer up my life; A new commandment; Let there be love shared among us: and we closed with; How lovely are the mountains. One of our families led the prayers and with Ruth on the piano, we had an amazing morning.   Thank you everyone and once again ‘Well done’ to that young person who filled the cake sale and made such a wonderful result – a living example of what we had been talking about.

Thank you everyone.

Dcn. Olivia