Christ is risen!

No one has greater love than this, to lay down ones life for ones friends. John 15:13
It would be so easy to now move on from Easter as we have had the celebrations on the day but in fact it will go on for more weeks yet and for now, its mingled with Anzac day. Two events which we reflect deeply on. There is the reflection of the ultimate sacrifice of  Christ and the sacrifice of thousands of  men and women in the war. I recall visiting the Somme some time ago. Heartbreaking, numbing,emotional, utter grief and disbelief  at the 1000's of lives lost and yet I felt a spirit of peace hovering over the Somme. Its almost sacred ground I was walking on. Indeed it was sacred ground.
I felt that day, as I looked  at 10,000 names of soldiers who had no known grave, of hundreds of cemeteries that lined the roads and battle fields that Christ was deeply  present. Because of Easter,  he knows our sacrifice, he knows our suffering, he knows our grief, our desire for peace and he is forever in it.
Grace and peace from the Lord Jesus Christ.
Anne, servant of the Lord.

The Villas Brettonneux Cross in the Perth Cathedral

Easter love.

God has poured out his love to fill our hearts, Romans 5:5
We have seen the great love of God at Easter. A love that caused Jesus to die on a cross for us, A love that goes on and on in our hearts through the power of the Holy Spirit. But what do we do with this love?  Is it just within us to fill our hearts or is it there for us to share and keep the love of God flowing, a love that brings with it compassion and loving care and life that can be shared around, given away, 'hugged'onto  another.  Its  love with action. Its like a river that keeps flowing  and traveling and nourishing, a river of God's love. Its  not like a pond where the waters go nowhere, where the waters are like a dam, contained and held within.This Easter love that we have received needs to bubble over, keep flowing outwards and  sharing it with others. What are you going to do with this Easter love?
Grace and peace from the Lord Jesus Christ.
Anne, servant of the Lord.

Is God's love in you a pond or a flowing river?

Good Friday

So Jesus came out wearing a crown of thorns and a purple robe. Pilate said to them. 'Here is the Man.' John 19:5
Let our minds transport us back to a part of the world that throbs with the words and wonder of Jesus himself.

In the 1800's William How wrote this hymn:
It is a thing most wonderful. almost too wonderful to be true.
That God's own Son should come from heaven, and die to save a child like me.
I sometimes think upon the cross and shut my eyes and try to see.
The cruel nails and crown of thorns and Jesus crucified for me.

let us gaze on the wonders of the day and see Jesus pinned to the cruel tree, not by nails, but by love for you and me.
Grace and peace from the Lord Jesus Christ
Anne, servant of the Lord

A heel bone of a crucified person with the nail driven through. Museum in Jerusalem

Seek God first.

Your kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and your dominion endures through the generations. 
Psalm 145:13
I was humming a tune last night that has stayed with me into this morning. 'Seek ye first the kingdom of God  and his righteousness.'(TIS 745) It goes onto say. Ask and it will be given unto you, seek and you will find, knock and it shall be opened unto you .  When I think of this song I am projected back in time to when I worked in the Pitjantjara community of Ernabella in South Australia and the rich harmonious voices of the aboriginal people at day break singing these words from their camp. Sung in their language with these timeless words that hold no bounds, no discrimination, no barriers. Every morning was a spine tingling God experience.  Having been given the gift of a new day how do we welcome it in the name of the Lord?  By song? by prayer?  Or perhaps by just sitting in the garden in the stillness with  God working the new day  around us, creating.  Any one of these will ensure our day is in God's hands.
Grace and peace from the Lord Jesus Christ.
Anne, servant of the Lord.

Their voices rang out across the morning sky.

On solid ground we stand

Lord, you have been our dwelling place throughout all generations. Before the mountains were born. From everlasting to everlasting you are God. Psalm 90:1-2
If ever I had a perception of the magnitude of God's existence it has been in two specific places. One place was in the desert of  South Australia where I stood on ground so ancient. It was ground that had been forest long before it became a sea and long before it became a desert. I stood there on blackened soil mounds that were petrified stones of ancient tree trunks  embedded with fossilised  sea shells  and was overwhelmed with the time span between when God created them and me standing on them in 2011 and yet I felt  a great closeness to God. The second experience was when I stood  at the corner of the Dolorosa in the narrow streets of the old city of Jerusalem. Standing on the same stone streets that Jesus had walked on as he drew closer and closer to the cross and his crucifixion. We can draw great comfort from knowing that God has always been and always will be. What a mighty God to surrender ourselves to!
Grace and peace from the Lord Jesus Christ.
Anne, servant of the Lord.

Ancient forest in the desert showing brown petrified tree stumps.

God's work of art.

Accept my offering of praise O Lord.   Psalm 119:108
Have you been  stopped in your tracks at the sight of a 'glowing' autumn tree in full dress of delightful colour? . It's like God says as he puts down his painting palette , 'There it is, I have completed the colouring of this one and it now stands for your wonder and delight.' I am so warmed in my heart by his presence in this way. The autumn confrontation of beauty, breathtaking revelations of multiple colours of his glory. I look from tree to tree with a sense of  'there he is in all his glory and only God can dress a tree like that.' its wonderful to catch his Spirit this way, its fuel for the day. Look about, don't lose the moment of the Spirits refreshing in the rush to get to yesterdays unfinished work. Pause a moment with God and thank him for giving us more than we expect.
Grace and peace from the Lord Jesus Christ.
Anne

layer upon layer

'I am the resurrection and the life.' says the Lord. John 11:25
There is something special about autumn. God brings a sense of freshness, of quiet mornings, of colour and emptiness, of fog and mist, of perfect reflections on still waters. A beauty so deep. I think in every season we can see the Glory of the Lord if we are looking. There are multiple layers of death and life, all seeming to die before living. Its resurrection' stuff' that brings to mind the Easter message. Take a moment, just a moment and marvel at a tree in colour, then look again in a little while at its emptiness and then, in spring look again, and see layer upon layer of the Glory of the Lord. Of death and dying and resurrection.
Grace and peace from the Lord Jesus Christ.
Anne, servant of the Lord.

Multiple layers of life and death

ancestors of the followers

This is the list of the ancestors of Jesus Christ. Matthew 1:1-6
For many years I have been compiling the family history and through that I get a strong sense of who I am. I can see as far back as 1112 that we had a bishop in the family in Germany. 1112!! And since then there has been many,many clergy.Several of the women were Methodist mission workers among the poor and the orphans on the streets of Melbourne in the 1890's. So many faithful people. I have  several small books of reflections, written by a one of the women, and they give a great insight into her God and our family story. So many have walked in the footstep of  Jesus and still are. So many have lived their faith through great adversity, walking step by step with Jesus one foot after the other braking down walls of discrimination, injustice, exclusion. Feeding the poor and giving shelter to the homeless and holding the hand of the dying soldiers in the two World Wars.  I thought of Jesus who walked the earth. I thought of his list of ancestors and I thought of how we are all 'the ancestors of the followers' as we continue to follow in the steps of Jesus.
Dorothy De Hueck Doherty said. Those who follow in Jesus footsteps, who never deviate from his teachings, find that these teachings are revolutionary. 
Grace and peace from the Lord Jesus Christ.
Anne, servant of the Lord.

A carpenter in Nazareth said to be a descendant of Jesus.