Dear Friends,
There is, then, no condemnation now for those in Christ Jesus, because the law of the Spirit of life
has set us free from the law of sin and death. I am convinced that nothing can separate us from
Christ’s love. Neither death nor life, nor angels or demons, nor the present nor the future, nor any
powers, nor height nor depth nor anything else in all creation, will ever be able to separate us from
the love of God that is ours in Christ Jesus our Lord. [Romans 8:1-2, 38-39]
Why is it that a piece of string, no matter how carefully you put it my laptop out of its bag, however correctly I have put in the power lead, there is a knot in that too? Even more perplexing is how shoelaces, however painstakingly tied, will manage to come undone in a few paces. Whoever succeeds in answering such questions would make a million on Dragons’ Den.
It is not just string, cable and shoe laces, however, that become tangled into knots or come undone; we find the same in so much of life. Tackle a pile of washing up or ironing, mow the lawn or weed the garden, clean the car or paint the house, and before you know it, it needs to be done again. But make one little mistake and however hard we may try, we cannot undo it. Or can we?
At the heart of our faith lies a triumphant message of something both done and undone. On the one hand, nothing can undo what God has done in Christ. Through his death and resurrection, he has destroyed the power of evil and opened up the way of life for all. What needed doing has been done and nothing can ever change that! Yet on the other hand, through that decisive act, everything else done can be undone, for God is always ready to put the past behind us and help us start again. To assume that we are bound by what has gone before is to deny the message of the resurrection. Whatever we are, or have been, whatever mistakes have been made, we can always be a new creation. The past is done with, the future is open – thanks be to God.
God bless you all,
Yvonne