Reflection for the month - October
Follow me, with these words Jesus called his first disciples together. The words echo down the centuries to us – his followers today. We are more fortunate in some ways than those simple Galilean fishermen. They did not know the way where they were going, they did not fully know Jesus, nor His father whom they regularly asked to see, and they certainly did not know the kind of life they were to lead. We do know the way – Jesus – the way the truth and the life, and we know the Father too because Jesus and the Father are one, and who has seen Jesus has seen the Father – God Almighty.
Jesus is the way, when we follow Him, uniting our lives with His we are united with God and all the blessings and benefits of being children of God are ours.
God is love, St Paul in the wonderful chapter 13 of Corinthians spells out what love is, patient, kind, not boastful, not self-seeking, always trustful, always hopeful, always persevering, and never failing. This is the love which Jesus showed throughout his life, and asked his apostles, and now asks us, to love Him as he had loved them and now loves us – fully and unconditionally.
Jesus is the Truth. What we may believe as truth is so often the product of our fanciful imaginings, seeing things as we would like them to be rather than as in reality they are. In Jesus we can recognise the truth of Gods’ word, the truth that sets us free, the perfect standard of what is right, freeing us from self-deception and freedom to follow Him.
Jesus is the life, the whole life, involved in every aspect of our lives. We cannot separate our spiritual lives from our day-to-day existence. We cannot be one day each week Christians. Christ must be with us in all that we do all the time. We pray hard that this will always be so.
God is love. His love is freely given, and unconditional. We with His grace have only to respond to Him through our love for Him and for others. That is the way to eternal life. This is our faith and this is our hope. Trust steadily in God, hope unswervingly and love extravagantly. And the greatest of these is love. David Peacock