MAC KIRK

Peace in our lives John 20 Peace used in the Gospel here is the greek word eirene which we get our English word for peace, irenic. Peace is used in the sense of rest, quietness and of course in the Jewish sense of peace with God and others, now our Christian faith. It also means : irḗnē (from eirō, "to join, tie together into a whole") – properly, wholeness, i.e. when all essential parts are joined together; peace (God's gift of wholeness)." Biblehub.com John 20:19 Bishop Sheen in his Life of Christ said this about peace & John 20 at the appearance of Jesus here, "...(He) brought about peace by the Blood of the Cross, He came in His own Person to bestow it. Peace is the fruit of justice...Peace is the tranquility of order, not tranquility alone; for robbers can be tranquil in the possession of their spoils. Peace also implies order, the subordination of the body to the soul, of the sense to the reason, and the creature to the Creator. Isaiah said t...

Easter 2019 Someone asked me what Easter means to me in one word . I said " Resurrection-new life". It was not hard to distill it down into what Easter is about as I thought about it . It is the hope of eternal life in this world and the next, the promise that those who have died we will see again. Now they live in our memories and soon we will see eye to eye with our new bodies in heaven. That is what Easter is and to any Christian as well certainly. On that first Easter , at the break of day, Mary Magdalene, Joanna and Mary, the mother of James came to the tomb. They had already prepared spices resting on their Sabbath, that is Saturday, after Jesus died on the Cross on Good Friday. They were serving Him even in His death. They came to the tomb, the stone was already rolled away, and they went into the tomb, " and found not the body of the Lord Jesus." 24:3 They were met by two men in dazzling light. They are told, " He is not here, but is r...

Maundy Thursday 2019 Luke 22:14-30 Jesus' great desire was to eat the Passover with His disciples. We often forget that this is what was going on. vs 14-15 of Luke 22 tell us that. This year Passover is tomorrow nite. But we are not Jews . We are Christians who believe all of the OT was fulfilled in Jesus Christ, His only Son our Lord. I was reading thru some devotionals and came across this letter from CS Lewis. " Dear Mrs. Neylan, Sorry you’re in a trough. I’m just emerging (at least I hope I am) from a long one myself. As for the difficulty of believing it is a trough, one wants to be careful about the word “believing.” We often mean by it “having confidence or assurance as a psychological state” – as we have about the existence of furniture. But that comes and goes and by no means always accompanies intellectual assent. For example, in learning to swim you believe, and even know intellectually, that water will support you, long before you feel any real conf...

Palm sunday 2019 We call this time in the life of Jesus the " Agony". It was in the Garden of Gethesame, the Mount of Olives where Jesus had often gone to spend periods of reflection perhaps on His life, mission and purpose. Agony is a trauma which may include extreme mental and physical suffering. The central vs I wish to discuss is vs 22, Luke 22, " Not my will, but yours, be done." How did Jesus come to this answer? He was human as well as divine and was truly tested as a man. He prayed to God for guidance. " And he knelt down , and prayed." The usual form for prayer was to stand, but on this occasion at it was especially difficult, he knelt. We too face decisions in our lives when we must ask God for His purpose for us. We are human too with fears, doubts, perplex issues and problems. We cannot face them alone. Others can help ---yes, we call some friends, mentors and guides. Another person who listens with discretion and discernment is s...

One Thing Philippians 3 "Not as though I had already attained, either were already perfect: but I follow after, if that I may apprehend that for which also I am apprehended of Christ Jesus. 13Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended: but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, 14I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus. " One thing I do. I do is not in the original language. You will see that in italics in some translations. So one thing . The one thing is ? The service of Christ is the one thing and a high calling. Whatever interferes with this or is not part of the goal , as the runner looks forward in this passage ,needs to be taken out. I thought of this when I trimmed around the orange trees, bushes that bore so many oranges last year . There are trees actually growing right near them and around them. The trees block the sun that the ...