Thought For The Week 9 April 2023

This morning we have enjoyed our dawn Easter service, remembering and celebrating the sheer wonder and joy of Jesus’s first disciples when they encountered the Risen Lord.

These disciples who, for three years, had been travelling up and down the country with Jesus, proclaiming, healing, teaching and delivering right alongside him. They had witnessed miracles and had their lives transformed.

All of that came to a sudden halt in the events of Holy Week, culminating in Jesus’ arrest, punctuated by his crucifixion, and blown wide open by His resurrection.

And yet, here they are, back to the family business. Fishing again.

I was struck by the sheer ordinariness of it all.

And that’s so often the case in our own lives, isn’t it? All of us have had moments when we have encountered God’s love face to face. All of us have had moments when it has felt like heaven and earth are touching. And then we’ve had times of utter devastation.

Somehow we pick up the pieces and go back to the ordinary thing.

But the return of Jesus is no ordinary thing. God breaks through into our ordinary situations and transforms them into something extraordinary, something miraculous.

So if you’re ever in a situation where the ordinariness of life gets you down, remember: the extraordinariness of love and life, of salvation, is only a breath away. Seek God, and you may just find him where you least expect, seeking you all along.

Nga Manaakinui,

Rory