During the week, a God-given sleepless night led to me re-reading John Chapman’s A Fresh Start, the book I mentioned in last week’s sermon. It is a book to help someone become a Christian and to take the first few steps in the Christian life. I was reminded just what a great book it is for a Christian at any stage of life. The best thing about it is that John Chapman shares about his own life. I found it reassuring to know that even as a well-known evangelist, he went through the same struggles of sometimes not wanting to pray, or feeling like he doesn’t want to be a Christian today because he is sick of trying to be nice to people!!! Yet the unbreakable fact of God’s love for him, shown at the Cross of Christ, kept him going.
I enjoyed this story about a university student who understood what is at stake when we consider the gospel:
I was urging a young man at a university mission to take a Gospel and read it. He told me he hadn’t ever read one, and didn’t want to take one even then. “What have you got to lose?” I asked.
“Everything”, he replied, “it might turn out to be true.”
We have ordered in some copies of this book. I highly recommend it.
In brief:
- Evening Prayer is on again this Wednesday at 7.00 pm. We will decide from week to week whether to keep holding these services during Lent, depending on the response.
- The Annual Vestry Meeting is in two weeks, on Sunday 19th March, 11.30 am. Notices are up, and nomination forms are available. If you have any photos from the life of our church in the last twelve months, I would love to be able to include them in my report. Send them to Amelia in the office: contact@stjudesrandwick.org.au.
Yours,
Andrew Schmidt,
Rector