Bringers of Good News
A highlight of this holiday was to go with the grandchildren to the cinema to watch Nativity. It’s a great Christmas comedy featuring a primary school teacher played by ex-Office Martin Freeman. It was a feel-good film, and had people laughing out loud. A memorable scene was the angelic host, suitably attired children singing about the good news of the birth of a saviour.
In a time when we are surrounded in church life by sad news, it was a simple but timely reminder that the message we proclaim is still good news. 30 years on from that Christmas night, Jesus stands up in the Nazareth Synagogue and proclaims that he has been anointed to preach good news to the poor, freedom to prisoners, sight to the blind, release to the oppressed, and to proclaim a new season. The word Gospel is derived from the old English words ‘god spell’ meaning ‘good news’.
As we start a new year, whatever we face, our commission remains to communicate this good news to people. In Jesus we can find love, forgiveness, freedom from fear, the promise of eternal life, release from addictions and phobias, a new start, a new sense of worth and purpose, new relationships, and a new hope.
How are we to share this good news in a relevant and meaningful way? That is the challenge. We are called to do this as a team together, and by demonstrating the supreme quality of love. Let’s support and encourage each other, and not grow weary in doing what is right.
I am encouraged as even this week there are the first signs of buds on the apparently dead winter trees, and the first green shoots in the bare brown garden flower-beds. Our God has not left us; he is still at work and continues to walk with us.
David Thatcher
Add comment January 5th, 2010