One more week!

I'm sure the idea of a countdown is far less compelling to you than it is to me, but it is one more week until at 1630 on Monday 16th June 2008 I fly out of Durban, leaving somewhere I consider truly home, and where, at least for a while, my heart will continue to reside. It's slowly dawning on me that this is happening, and that some time next week I'll realise that my departure has suddenly gone from 'coming' to 'gone'. At that point I'll look back and be surprised, I'm sure, that it happened so quickly and that all those intentions and possibilities that had been in my mind to do before I left are now expired.

What do you do with a week? If you had one week to live, what would you do? While I'm not dying (at least, not yet!), my life here is going to undergo a death of sorts. Yes, dear friends will remain dear friends, and yes, the task I've given myself to will continue, and yes, I can come back and visit, but my life here will die. Friends will be distant, I'll not be directly invovled with Hope Church, and while I can visit, I will come back as a visitor and not a resident. I hope to be able to make this last week count, and to just make sure I have no regrets about how I leave, even if, for now, I will regret leaving.

Was it like this when I left London? Yes, a bit. But somehow I felt ready to leave London. So far I don't feel ready to leave here; if anything I feel like I'm just about settled in. More than what we naturally happen to feel though, the Bible tells us to arm ourselves with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace (Eph 6:15). I love this part of the 'armour of God' - a readiness on our feet to move and be involved in the spread of the Gospel and the extension of the Kingdom. But it is not spreading the Gospel of peace we're to be armed with, but the readiness that it brings to us.

The Gospel puts us at peace with God. We don't seek peace, but God Himself brings an end to hostilities and announces to us the commencement of his truce. As Gary Welsh would often say, "I had peace with God when I woke up this morning, before I'd done a single thing. And it doesn't matter what I did yesterday or what I might do right now - I have peace!" This peace is in Christ, not in us. We change, He doesn't, and so neither does the state of full and final peace between those who are in Christ and God.

So how does this make us ready? If you think about going on a journey, as I'm about to do, you'll be thinking of making many preparations. But a point comes when all the preparations are done and all that is left is to go. God has made all the preparations - 'our bags are packed', as it were! We stand ready to be used by God, fully equipped by Him to be ministers of His gospel because we stand in Christ.

This Gospel also comes to us with the world in view. It came to us because it came to the world. This message came to us because someone else had it in mind to take it to the world. The message that came to me was not just, "God has made provision for peace with you", but, "God has sent His Son to die for the sins of the world!" Implicit in the Gospel is the call to go to the world with it, for if we really believe it to be God's means for dealing with the sins of the world, we believe by extension that it must go to the whole world; and so we become ready. We accept salvation for ourselves as we come to accept that Christ has achieved a salvation for the world. We've received a world changing message, and now we must go to change the world with it! This is another way I think the Gospel makes us ready - it calls us to be ready for service by its very nature as a world reaching message.

The Gospel is a message that's packed and ready to go - God has settled things in Christ! It's done! What more 'ready' message could there be? This readiness is not a call to go and finish something, but to announce that "it is finished" (Jn 19:30)! A ready Gospel makes for a ready person to go and spread it.

While it is the case that outer circumstances do quite force my hand in coming home, I can see beyond that to a God who is guiding my steps to bring his mercy to many people. Just writing this has helped my heart to be all that more ready. London is not enough to make me want to come home, nor even (yet) are other ties (with the exception of Mandy!). But the Gospel is enough to make me ready to go. What a message it is:

"Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. (2 Corinthians 5:17-21)

Ready or not, here I come!