The paradoxes of the ways of God are part of the mystery of our being, and though we may see kinship between Job, Jeremiah and the Suffering Servant in Second Isaiah, it is only in the Crucifixion and Resurrection of Christ that the afflictions of Job reach their proper evaluation. We have reached the heart of the message of Job when we can say: “Nothing in my hand I bring, simply to thy Cross I cling.”
- William Neil
Simply To The Cross We Cling
August 2, 2012 By Leave a Comment
Do You Have a “Ho Hum” Faith?
April 17, 2012 By Leave a Comment
“And now here we are, nearly 2,000 years later. We come to church today to celebrate the Resurrection. We have been taught the theology, we have sung the hymns, we believe the creeds. Yet some years at least, there can be a large gap somehow between our living of the Christian life and a deep sense of freedom in resurrection life. It can be not so much ‘Alleluia. Christ is risen. He is risen indeed!’ as ‘Alright. Alleluia anyway.’”
- Bishop Steven Conway
Playing with House Money
April 13, 2012 By Leave a Comment
Inspiration for me often comes from unexpected sources. Despite the fact I have never gambled in my life, the expression playing with house money kept flashing through my mind this past Easter Sunday when hearing David’s sermon on the resurrection.
Playing with house money is a gambler’s term that means that you won enough money from the “house” (or casino) that you can use only these winnings for your future bets. In other words, when you are playing with house money, you have nothing to lose.
Alister McGrath puts it like this:
And so with us now. In on sense, victory has not come; in another it has. The resurrection declares in advance of the event God’s total victory over all evil and oppressive forces – such as death, evil, and sin. Their backbone has been broken, and we may begin to live now in the light of that victory, knowing the long night of their oppression will end.
As believers in Jesus Christ, we are playing with house money — even if we lose everything else when walking this earth, we’ve still won. That’s the power of the resurrection. Is there anything more liberating?
