WORDS FROM W.W. July 25, 2013
Today marked the last day of our congregation’s day camp, which we call Summer Daze. Summer Daze began about eight years ago as a way to encourage kids to read during the school’s summer vacation. It actually began as a result of conversations with the Shirley Stevens, the principal of Longfellow School down the street from our church. Longfellow, which unfortunately closed about four years ago, did not have funding for a summer reading program, so our church stepped into the gap in the creation of Summer Daze.
This year’s theme was a take-off (no pun intended) on “Star Wars.” During the week we talked about some Biblical themes that deal with light and darkness, chosen people, and heroes of the Christian faith.
Today I explained the simple gospel message to the kids. It wasn’t complicated, and they understood it. I realized that as a pastor for thirty-four years that I quite often have made the gospel complicated. I’m prone to put in “What if’s”.
I realize that life is often complicated. It’s filled with crises, misunderstandings, obstacles, and setbacks. But the gospel is rather simple and straightforward.
Each of us is sinful and falls short .
God still loves us despite our failures.
He gave his Son, Jesus, to die on the cross to atone for our sin.
If we believe in Jesus God promises life, and life eternal.
We can lengthen out the theology with more clarification…and amplification…but it still really comes down to that summary. It’s really a life and death story, or, better yet, a death to life story.
And the interesting thing is that when I look back on it, today’s sharing of the simple gospel was made possible because a school couldn’t provide a reading program.
Amazing!
Words from WW Blog 