Dear Friends,
Blessings to you this April.
I’d like to offer a brief thought for us this month as we celebrate the Easter season, and move into the Spring of 2018 (it’s hard to believe it’s April already!).
The Resurrection has a special place in our Movement’s heart. At the center of our theology is the “already and not yet” of the Kingdom of God. This central idea frames our approach to life and ministry as we recognize that we are an Easter Sunday people living in a Good Friday world.
Miracles happen. But suffering does as well. And we choose to live with that tension, declaring that God’s Kingdom has broken into the present, and also declaring that the Spirit’s presence is at work in our lives through the suffering and pain we experience.
We know that we live some of our lives in Good Friday. Any one of us could tell the stories of pain, death, and loss in our lives and in our churches this year.
But we also know that some of our lives are lived in Easter Sunday – we know and experience healing, victory, and reconciliation by the power of the Spirit – and we celebrate together!
Perhaps we could say that we are a Holy Saturday movement in some respects. We live in the tension between the crucifixion and the resurrection. We are an Easter people, but we don’t leave the pain that we or others are experiencing behind as we proclaim Christ’s victory.
We know that Jesus will win. We know this tension will not last forever. Easter points us to the Resurrected One – who was the first of many to be raised in new bodies, when the future fullness of the Kingdom of God comes in all its glory.
Blessings to you this Spring, and I encourage you to hold fast to your faith in Jesus as we walk out the Easter promises we have in Christ.
“Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for he who promised is faithful.”
Heb. 10:23
For the Greater Glory of God, and the well-being of people,
Phil
Phil Strout
National Director
Vineyard USA
