A Call for Repentance!

A Call for Repentance!

A boy was caught stealing apples from the kitchen in a boarding school.  He was brought to the chaplain.  “Now you must confess your sins, and ask God for forgiveness,” he counseled.  The boy prayed, “Dear God, please forgive me for taking seven apples from the kitchen.” “But I thought you told me that you stole five apples,” the chaplain asked.  “Yes, but I am including the two I am going to take tomorrow” the boy answered.   As someone puts it, “Repentance is not feeling sorry on Sunday for what you did on Saturday which you will do again on Monday.” (David Wong, Make them Laugh and make them Learn, Story 18, BAC Printers, Singapore)

The Gospel writer Mark records that Jesus proclaimed the good news of God by preaching repentance.  He followed in the footsteps of John the Baptist who also preached the baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. (Mark 1:4 &15) The Old Testament tradition of the prophets was their message to God’s chosen people to repent of their sins and escape from the punishment of God.  However, the Israelite's rarely responded to the prophet’s call for repentance.  The exception was the people of Nineveh who repented all the way from the King and his people along with their animals adorning the sack cloth. (Jonah 3:6-10)  God’s chosen people eventually failed to repent and received their judgment of being exiled from the Promised Land.  

Today, the call for repentance is for us who declare our faith in Jesus Christ.  Repentance is not an onetime act.  As forgiven sinners, we need to repent of our sins frequently as we are still being sanctified until the day the Lord takes us home or his second coming.  We need to repent of our complacent attitude towards God, our compromising moral conduct and our corrupted mind towards one another.  It is pride, the age old origin of sin that is a stumbling block for repentance. 

Let us beware of complacency, reject compromise and repent of our corrupt mind that God in His mercy will transform us by the renewing of our mind. (Rom 12:1-2) May we pray for one another as we humble ourselves and say “Lord create in us a contrite heart, a consecrated life and a cleansed conscience”! God has promised that when we in humility repent, there is forgiveness and healing. (2Ch 7:13-14)  Let us experience this forgiveness and healing everyday! John Amalraj

There’s No More Sting in Death!

There’s No More Sting in Death!

Benjamin Franklin, inventor and one of the founding fathers of USA writes “...but in this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes”.  There is a sense of finality to death, that even though we know it by instinct, as human beings we always seem to forget.   As the images of the tragedy in Sri Lanka unfolded on Easter Sunday – it appeared to be an irony.  Christians celebrating the day of resurrection as the bombs changed the world of hundreds of men, women and children – bringing an abrupt end to the festivities. 

The reactions of their country’s ordinary Christian men and women to this tragedy brought back the hope of resurrection in a way the world may find it difficult to understand.   It was like when the hopeless, frustrated and fearful disciples were attempting to make sense of the tragedy behind closed doors that the presence of the resurrected Jesus in their midst brought a sense of bewilderment and unbelief along with new hope for the future.

Recently, I went to visit our family doctor to consult on a minor health issue.  When I entered the clinic, I found that they were re-painting and changing all the furniture.  I was happy about the new look.  I was soon ushered into the doctor’s cabin and there I found another doctor sitting.  So I enquired whether my family doctor was out of station.  She replied “No, he passed away two weeks ago after a heart attack and now we have taken over the clinic in his place.  I was shocked and surprised.  The familiar family doctor was dead and now everything has changed in the clinic within a fortnight.  The finality to death in our present life was vivid, but the hope that one day I will see him in heaven was comforting and encouraging.

Paul exhorts the Corinthian church saying that Christ is the first fruit of our resurrection.  Since Christ was raised, we will also be raised and our bodies will be changed from mortality to immortality, perishable to imperishable.  He then goes on to emphatically challenge, “Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?”  …. But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. (1Cor.15: 55-57).  The hope of resurrection gives us the courage to face death and its finality with a cry of victory.

We trust that beyond death – Jesus’ resurrection gives us a new hope – the hope of resurrection.  Very few people around us know this truth and hope.  May we share that hope of resurrection with those around us every day! John Amalraj