Southern Cross Presbyterian Church

Yesterday at The Bible Talks we began a new series of talks from Paul’s letter to the Colossians. We posed the question ‘how is Jesus relevant today?’ to students, and learned that the gospel calls us to join in on something much bigger than ourselves: the great journey of all those all over the world following the way of Jesus. It’s been great seeing the group grow this year, with a lot of new faces coming along to our main meetings on Tuesdays, quickly becoming regular faces, building friendships and sharing their lives throughout the week, and welcoming friends who don’t know Jesus into their relationships.

Please pray for our ministry at the uni, that we would see our group grow more and more in love and grace towards each other through hospitality, encouraging conversation and service, and that many students who don’t know the Lord Jesus would see his grace at work in our lives. Please also pray that Christian students would hold firmly to the gospel and not chase after what the world offers instead.

This morning I heard the sad news that Australia has lost another soldier in Afghanistan. Regardless of your feelings about Australia’s involvement, the life of every soldier or civillian (Australian, Afghan, whatever) lost in such conflicts is a terrible thing. Despite all our exposure to death through the media we need to try to hold onto the enormity of every life lost if only so that our basic human compassion doesn’t die a slow death as well. As Josef Stalin infamously said, “The death of one man is a tragedy. The death of a million – that’s just a statistic”.

But as I was listening to the chief of Australia’s armed forces, Angus Houston, speak at the press conference, I was struck by these words, addressed to the dead soldiers family: “I know that there are no words that can provide comfort or ease your suffering at this terrible time”.

The reason these words struck me was that in my quiet time this morning, I’d read some very different words in 2 Corinthians 1: “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God.” This comfort is not just mere wishful thinking or kind thoughts. Neither is it a hollow comfort that attempts to lessen the suffering of those who grieve. Instead, it points to the God of all comfort who asks us to depend on him as the way THROUGH the inevitable suffering of this life.

Grief is real and the appropriate response to suffering and death, even for Christians. But as we are reminded in Psalm 23 & 1 Thessalonians 4:13, ours is a grief in which God stands beside us and walks with us and leads us through it. God has known suffering and death, and he knows the hope and the peace that lies beyond them both for all those who trust in Jesus.

I hope that this is true comfort to any of you who suffer and I hope also that the comfort you receive will then overflow to others as God intends. When someone is grieving, we do in fact have words of comfort to offer – comfort, hope & even eternal life.

At church on Sunday night we heard from Ian Coutts about how significant it was for him to be ‘adopted’ by a family from church when he arrived in Lismore to study at SCU some years back. It was a big part of getting connected with our wider church family and being encouraged in following Jesus.

Perhaps it was also Ian’s mention of three-course meals but the interview had the effect of prompting 8 more students to ‘sign-up’ to be adopted.  That’s great, because there are many families in the church ready and waiting to adopt! If there are any more students interested in being adopted (or families in adopting), do let us know soon because we’ll shortly be finishing all the matching up so the meals can begin and the and friendships grow, as we grab this opportunity to spur one another on in Christ.

It seemed like a good idea at the time.

The Clunes church building will go up for sale by Auction on May 2nd. The sale has been coming for a couple of years now, since services ceased at Clunes at the end of 2007 after our 5 year effort at revitalisation. So it seemed like a good idea ahead of the advertising of the sale to have a story run in the paper emphasising the positive side to the story: small village churches may be closing but that doesn’t mean churches aren’t growing. Positive? How naïve!

I just about choked on my coffee when I read the subheading “community forced to travel to worship”. The journo actually did a pretty good job with the story but the editorial addition of this subheading really casts something of a shadow over how it all reads. And throw in the feedback bubble, “how important are local churches?” – I felt a little like I was the smiling assassin in the photo answering “not at all!”. It’s funny how the media spend 90% of the time belting the church as being irrelevant, but then throw in 10% indignation when we change with the times.

Ah well. They say “all publicity is good publicity”. I’m not so sure! But that’s the media for you. The Northern Star is in the business of selling papers. Sensationalism sells. Conflict sells. With a front page calling some violence in Byron “WWIII”, you know what to expect as you flick from story to story through the rest of the rag.

Let’s remember, however, that the letters pages of our local papers still represent a great opportunity to let our community know that there are many in this region who still call Jesus Lord. A Lord you don’t need buildings to worship in.