Nothing To Add

Good Friday.

 

The day we remember that Jesus died for us.  He died to take away our sins.  All of them.

 

Sometimes I think we find it easy to 'sanitise' our sins and to imagine that Jesus only died for the stuff we don't mind other people knowing about.  The I-know-I-really-shouldn'ts of life.  But we think He couldn't really have died for the things that we don't want other people to know.

 

Or we can get to thinking that whilst His death certainly gave us a 'leg up' on our way into God' good books, we still need to add to it, or 'top it up' by our own good deeds.

 

But God has done it all.  We can add nothing to Jesus' crucifixion.

 

Paul writes,

"If a living relationship with God could come by rule-keeping, then Christ died unnecessarily."

[Galatians 5:21 MSG]

and

"The God-setting-things-right that we read about has become Jesus-setting-things-right for us. And not only for us, but for everyone who believes in him. For there is no difference between us and them in this. Since we’ve compiled this long and sorry record as sinners (both us and them) and proved that we are utterly incapable of living the glorious lives God wills for us, God did it for us. Out of sheer generosity he put us in right standing with himself. A pure gift. He got us out of the mess we’re in and restored us to where he always wanted us to be. And he did it by means of Jesus Christ."
 

[Romans 3:21-24 MSG] 

 

Jesus died for our sins once and for all.  There is nothing to add.

 

 

 

 

The Beauty Of Snow

It finally snowed!

 

And snowed and snowed and snowed and snowed and snowed.

 

I got up at 5 to check this morning and was delighted with the sight.

 

I absolutely love the snow.  I love the scrunching crunch of it under your feet as you walk.  I love that it slows the world down and gives us the chance to relax and reflect.  I love how quiet and hushed everything becomes, how everything is muted.  I love that it brings people together to build snowmen and have snowball fights. 

 

But most of all, I love how beautiful the world looks when it is covered in a thick layer of soft snow.

 

Wilhelmina in Ugly Betty says,

 

"Snow is a magical blanket, it hides what's ugly and makes everything beautiful."

 

Snow can make even the ugliest of sights look beautiful.  There is a huge, towering scrap yard a few roads away from my flat, which usually looks pretty monstrous.  But today, even that was transformed into something magical.

 

The Bible describes God's grace as being like snow:

 

 

         "This is God’s Message:
         'If your sins are blood-red,
         they’ll be snow-white.
         If they’re red like crimson,
         they’ll be like wool.'"

 

         [Isaiah 1:18 MSG]

But rather than just covering over the ugliness of life, and hiding it for a while, as snow does, God's grace transforms everything it touches.  So that when it melts away, what is left is more beautiful than before.