Welcome to our Eighth Friday Connection – 8th May 2020
Dear Friends,
Can you believe that this coming Sunday will be the fifth Sunday after Easter, that day when we celebrated with great joy the resurrection of our Lord and Saviour? Easter day, the day when sin and death were defeated by Christ’s death and resurrection and gives us assurance and confidence that whatever happens, Jesus walks with us and God will protect us. Psalm 31, verses 1-5 tells how King David put his trust in God, how he acknowledged God as his rock and fortress in whom he put his trust. Surely when we accept and believe in God this is our experience too.
Our Gospel reading for this Sunday is John 14, verses 1-14, and gives us the words that Jesus used when talking to his friends about his own life, and his own approaching death. In trying to prepare them for his leaving them and returning to God, he offers them some of the best known words in the New Testament: “I am the way, and the truth, and the life! Nobody comes to the Father except through me.”
When we feel we have lost our way in life, in Jesus we find the road back to God, to Jesus, and to ourselves. When we hear so many words in the world, all claiming to contain the truth, in Jesus we find that genuine teaching that makes sense of anything and everything that happens to us. When we have been hearing of so many lives lost in recent weeks, perhaps someone close to us, in Jesus we hear the promise that He gives us a life that begins in this existence, but goes on all for all time, and beyond time. Jesus has come in to our world to open up the path that leads us to God, and we only find it through Him.
These are words that we all need to hear, and take in, and seek to pray and live by each day. There is a beautiful song, from the Bible Society that says it so well:
Do not be worried and upset, believe I God, believe also in Me,
There are many rooms in my Father’s house, and I’m going to prepare a place,
prepare a place for you.
I am the way, the truth and the life, no one comes to the Father except by Me,
I am the way, the truth and the life, and I’m going to prepare a place,
prepare a place for you.
After I go and prepare a place you, I will come back and take you to Myself,
so that you may come and be where I am, and I’m going to prepare a place,
prepare a place for you.
I am the way, the truth and the life….
© Bible Society 1980
With our love and prayers, Terry and Irene
If you would like to look at any or all of the readings for this coming Sunday they are:
Acts 7:55 to end; Psalm 31: 1-5; 1 Peter 2.2-10; John 14. 1-14