Vicar's Message

by Revd Martijn Mugge

 

HOME SWEET HOME

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Someone once wrote that ‘family is the heart of a home.’ And that’s so true, isn’t it, because ‘family’ and ‘home’ are what you and I were made for. Indeed, our true ‘forever home’ is found when we join our ‘forever family.’

 

This May we will be thinking more about this as we celebrate Pentecost, or Whitsunday. It’s the day that marks the birthday of the Christian church, when God the Holy Spirit descended on the first followers of Jesus so that they might truly know God’s love, peace, power and presence, and be equipped to tell other people that we can become God’s children by knowing and accepting Jesus into our hearts.

 

On that first Pentecost, what started out as just 120 followers of Jesus (with no other Christians anywhere else in the world), grew to a forever family of 3000 people who accepted Jesus into their lives, and a worldwide forever family today that accounts for roughly a third (2.2bln) of the world’s population!

 

We’ll think more about ‘family’ on Trinity Sunday, when we remember that God is not a solitary individual or a power, like the force in Starwars, but a loving family of three persons: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. And the wonderful news of Jesus is that you and I are invited to be part of this family. How? By getting to know God’s Son Jesus, inviting him into your life, uniting yourself with him by faith, and in so doing becoming a child of God, knowing God as your Father, and all Christian believers as your brothers and sisters in Christ.

 

And so, whatever your experience might be of your own father or family, Jesus wants you to know that there is a perfect, loving father in heaven, who longs to adopt you as His child and welcome you into His ‘forever family.’ And so, this May, may you join God’s family and know God’s love as the Holy Spirit reveals God the Father to you through Jesus. And join us as we celebrate Pentecost on Sunday 19 May at 10.30am at St Peters Church.