Author Archives: reveds

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About reveds

Occupation: Pastor, Ebenezer Presbyterian Church, Lennox, SD Education: BS - Christian Education, Sterling College; MDiv. - Princeton Theological Seminary Family: Married, with Four children. Hobbies: Running (will someday run a marathon), Sci-Fi (especially Doctor Who and Sherlock), Theater, and anything else my kids will let me do.

Pushing the Restart Button

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As I continue in my daily struggle with all things computerized, I have learned the joyful bliss of pushing the restart button.  Restarting stops everything, shuts the computer down, and resets the system.  The restart almost always fixes the problem.  I sometimes wish life came with a restart button.

This got me thinking of all the ways we use the restart in life:

  • When there’s an error on my computer – If you’ve ever had that “blue screen of death” telling you that a fatal error has occurred, you know the wonder of the restart.  If your system updates or crashes, a restart is usually always in order.
  • When someone false-starts in a race – You’ve seen it in the Olympics, or you’ve been there yourself: on the starting line, ready for the race to start.  Just before the gun fires, someone false-starts, and everyone is called back to the starting line to try one more time.
  • In terms of foreign and domestic relations – Much was said last year about pushing the restart button in our conversations with other nations, setting a new tone in diplomacy and dialogue.  Sometimes we need to push that button in our own homes, deciding to start afresh when dealing with long-standing conflict.

Do we have a restart with God?  There are times when each of us has gone astray from God, wandered from His way, stopped listening to His word.  Is it possible to “restart” with God, to stop, go back, and reset our lives in a way that our problems will be solved?

There is, but it’s not as easy as simply pushing a button.  God does offer us a second chance, and a third, a fourth, etc… but it comes at with a price.  For us, the chance to restart with God came at the cost of God’s Son, our savior Jesus Christ.  In His love for us, Jesus paid for our sin and guilt, and through His cross, so that we can have new life.  His grace is so sufficient, His love so enduring, His sacrifice so complete, there is nothing that we have done, nor anything we can do, that He cannot overcome.  If you need a Restart today, know that by trusting in the grace and mercy in Jesus Christ, you can start anew with God.

SDG

The Lord is Risen – What Now?

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“Then the disciples went back to their homes.” John 20:10

Dear Friends,

“The Lord is Risen!  He is risen indeed!”

Now what?

It’s fascinating what John tells us happened after the disciples had discovered the empty tomb.  Mary had told them what she had seen, and John and Peter ran to the tomb to see for themselves.  They saw that the tomb was, in fact, empty.  The burial cloths were lying on the ground, the face cloth was folded neatly by itself.  But then, what happened?  John tells us quite simply, “Then the disciples went back to their homes.”

In a way, this still happens today.  Seven weeks ago we started a journey called Lent, a time of reflection and preparation for the suffering, death, and resurrection of Jesus.  We start the journey with ashes, we remember the Lord’s last supper with his disciples, we read the accounts of his death.  Then comes Easter, and we celebrate the Good News of his resurrection from the dead.  We shout “He is Risen.  He is risen indeed!”

Then we go home.

Monday comes after Easter Sunday, and we go back to life as usual, exhausted from the journey, but no different than before we started.

This should not be.  Jesus spent the next 40 days leading up to his ascension teaching the disciples to go out into the world to make know what had happened.  The book of Acts recounts for us what happened when the disciples followed this call.  They preached the risen Christ because they knew the risen Christ, and they knew the new life given by the risen Christ.  Through their sharing and living the Good News lives were changed.

The risen Christ changes lives.  If we believe that Jesus Christ is risen today, let’s not just sing it and celebrate it in worship, but let us let this joyous truth transform the way we look at the world.  No longer can we simply go back to our homes, to our offices, to our classrooms: we go into the world as a mission field.  Our homes, our offices, our classrooms are now our mission, places for us to take the Good News of Christ so that lives may be changed.

Friends, in the spirit of the resurrection, go into the world and let it be known that the Lord is risen.  He is risen indeed.

Grace and peace,

Pastor Ethan