Monthly Thought

September 2006

Welcome back to September. Chances are that this is your least favourite month of the year. Summer's over. Your tan has peeled. School's restarted. It's probably going to be 4 months or so before your next holiday. What is there to be cheerful about? Why don't we go back to school with a long face, moaning about how rubbish it is to be back?

To answer that let's have a look at a short passage from the Bible in the New Testament (while Jesus was on earth and after he went back to heaven).

Paul was in prison while he was writing this to the Christians in Philippi:

Do everything without complaining or arguing, so that you may become blameless and pure, children of God without fault in a crooked and depraved generation, in which you shine like stars in the universe as you hold out the word of life (Philippians 2 v 14 -16)

When things aren't going just exactly as we might like them to our automatic reaction is to have a good moan, but in doing so we're being exactly like the world around us. Paul talks about the world in which they were living as being "crooked and depraved" and the message puts it as "a squalid and polluted society." They are people who are never thankful for what they have, always ready to criticise and grumble about their lives.

But we are to be blameless, pure and so different to them it's as though we shine like stars by comparison. We have so much to be thankful for and we should be showing others our gratitude to God for all he's done for us. What a contrast it would be if, while your friends are complaining that they've set homework on the first day back, you are cheerful that you have an education, that you've had a great holiday, that you can see your mates again... Wouldn't that speak volumes about your faith? Wouldn't that show that there are many reasons to be grateful to God, or that knowing Jesus means there's so much more to your life than just school?

And when they ask why you're looking so flipping chirpy perhaps you could tell them about some of the things God's been doing in your life this summer? I pray that you will have the courage to stand out as being different in this way and "hold out the word of life" to your mates who don't know Christ.

God Bless, Becki Dean

ant@beckidean.com