The nations are in uproar. Our news is filled with war and rumours of war. Across the world we are grappling with political upheaval and instability, humanitarian disasters and culture clashes. It’s easy to be overwhelmed by each news cycle or sucked into a vortex of anxiety created by social media algorithms. But this is not the only story, or the greatest that we are living in.
For Christ’s love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died. And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again.
So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: the old has gone, the new is here! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: be reconciled to God. God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
As Christians we have our feet planted firmly in the present reality of our world, but our hearts are fixed on the greater reality, the larger story of God.
During Wholly Holy, we want to remind ourselves of the hope we have in Jesus, and God’s great mission of reconciliation and peace. In a time when people are becoming more and more polarised, we will be focussing on how God is reconciling us, others, the world and his people. Together, we will invite the peace, the Shalom of God to invade and inhabit our situation as we surrender to God’s work of reconciliation in us and through us.
Join us on Lectio 365 for morning prayers from Monday 16th June
