Motto 2013

"Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!" - 2 Cor 5:17

January 1st. Just a date and yet it is one of those calendar entries which carries more significance than most. The year which has gone, has it been one to forget or remember? The 12 months ahead, will it be annus horriblis or maribilis? Time will tell, it always does.

Christian faith roots us and the planet in the soil of a new beginning. That’s what our motto text for 2013 says. In Christ we belong to a new creation order. Our past, present and future caught up in the new world that is coming, as God makes all things new. 

The good news is that that universal, global project has already begun.  What God did uniquely in and through Jesus when He raised him from the dead, He will repeat in every story of those who turn from self to trust Christ. Signposts of the future are seen here and now in communities of love where Christ’s Word is heard and practiced. Not perfectly but sufficiently. Enough to show that there is another way to live another kingdom to which to belong.

And if in Christ we are part of that glorious future, we need to look at each other differently in the present. All have value and significance. No one is just another Christian. We are walking, talking, living breathing new creations, now! 

Yes we still stumble and fall now. We carry on bearing the marks of our previous mutiny against the Creator in our thoughts, words and deeds. But we are new. The butterfly will emerge from the chrysalis to inhabit that final order.

Peter Baker

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