Summer/Winter

It's 6:30 AM and I just opened the window to let in a cool breeze since its quite warm inside and much to my disappointment, it makes basically no difference. I take some condolence in hearing about the weather conditions back home because yesterday I spent most of the day including the hottest three hours standing outside at an entrance to a youth event. We hit 36 degrees Celsius with virtually no wind - and the hot weather isn't even here yet...Then I find out that the forecast was right for my homeland and you had snow - up to two feet in one area! Thank you for sharing some of you weather information with me. It helps me appreciate the heat out here! Today, I'm heading out to a local high school to work on a renovation project the church is doing. We've got over $100,000 worth of money and materials donated and are expecting over 2,000 people working on it today. The plan is that the students will hardly recognize their school when they get back on Monday and if the previous projects like this are any indication (today's is the biggest yet) there will be a complete transformation by the end of the day.

I just thought of it, that's a great illustration of how Christ wants to come in and completely transform our lives. Just like only some schools accept the offer to be transformed, so only some people accept Christ's offer. In this school, there are some classrooms we are being told not to fix, in the same way, even those of us who are allowing Christ to change our lives have areas we try to keep Him out of. Just like our church has put a big investment and a lot of people into this project, so it is with Christ investing in us and putting many people into our lives. Just like the renovation offer is the initiative of the church and not of the school, so Salvation is the initiative of Christ and not of us. Just like it is offered completely free; with no strings attached, so is salvation. Just like the it takes work on the part of the school people to maintain what’s being done today, so we need to continually work at improving out lives even after Christ does the work in us.

I’m sure there’s more comparisons and I know these fall short of bringing out the truth of what God has done for us but hopefully it helps someone to realize a little more of the reality of Salvation.