This past weekend several Christ Community women participated in the The Gospel Coalition Women’s Conference. A conference for women, all about the Word! Plenary speakers unfolded the book of Nehemiah—the story of God’s people returned to a broken-down city and called to trust God’s Word at a point of great need. It’s about God redeeming a people for himself through his Son. This is our story. They focused on listening to this Word…living in light of it…helping others hear it…worshiping according to it…waiting on the Spirit who inspired it…exalting Jesus at the center of it.

Nuf said

I love this account from Tolkien because it captures the fight of the redeemed heart. Aslan is on the move, Spring is coming. Our Warrior God has defeated the enemy and is now rolling back the darkness. And we join in that victory and in the battle to work-out all the ramifications of life conquering death.

Sam: It’s like in the great stories Mr. Frodo, the ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger they were, and sometimes you didn’t want to know the end because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end it’s only a passing thing this shadow, even darkness must pass. A new day will come, and when the sun shines it’ll shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you, that meant something even if you were too small to understand why. But I think Mr. Frodo, I do understand, I know now folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back, only they didn’t. They kept going because they were holding on to something.

Frodo: What are we holding onto, Sam?

Sam: That there’s some good in the world, Mr. Frodo, and it’s worth fighting for.

O Lord,
make us have perpetual love and reverence for your holy Name, for you never fail to help and govern those whom you have set upon the sure foundation of your loving-kindness; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

We’re in the midst of a sermon series on God’s Story. This week, we’ll dwell on the Fall. Life makes so much more sense when you realize that the world and all that is in it is not as it should be.

From Scotty Smith:

God’s Story comes to us as a redemptive drama in four parts.

1. Creation – when everything was as God meant it to be.
2. Fall – the tragic intrusion of sin and death, resulting in the pervasive brokenness of all people and everything God has made.
3. Redemption – God’s astonishing promise to redeem his fallen image-bearers and creation through the grace-full work of his Son, Jesus Christ.
4. Consummation – the magnificent fulfillment of God’s plan to gather and cherish a people forever, and to live with them in a more-than-restored world, called “the new heaven and new earth.”

Each panel of the painting presents one of the four interrelated parts of God’s Story, and each is replete with well chosen symbols. First you notice that a tree is the predominant image in each panel; each tree is tagged with an identifying word: life, loss, love, and again, life. Why was a tree chosen as the best symbol to tell God’s Story? When God first created mankind, he placed Adam and Eve in a garden paradise, called Eden. In the middle of the Garden was the tree of life, a clear statement and celebration of the fact that God is so very good and generous. It is from God that we receive life and it is from him that all blessings flow.

Read the story behind the painting and more about God’s Story