All members of the RCC Community are welcome to attend our Association AGM held on Wednesday 15 May 24 commencing at 7pm in the MPC.
Welcome back!
All too quickly (and for some not quickly enough ;) the school holidays are over and routine and rhythms resume. I pray everyone was able to enjoy the moments given to them over the last few weeks.
I find the Anzac break always one of the most meaningful.
As Jesus is speaking to his disciples in John’s Gospel about who He is and the best way to live, he reminds them of the greatest commandments to love others as Jesus loves them. Then he foreshadows the kind of love he models by stating that humankind has no greater love than to lay down their life for one another. Jesus clearly challenges his disciples to understand that true love and respect for others comes by laying down our life for others. For me, though Jesus does die for us, this does not necessarily mean I have to physically die for others. Rather I must live in such a way that I lay down my life to serve them. A very difficult challenge in a world that constantly tries to sell me the lie that it is all about me!
This particular period of the Aussie year gives me time to truly appreciate this truth. I love that it starts with the Easter weekend where we are privileged to be given time to remember the culmination point in history where God made a way for us to be with Him and Him to be with us through the death and resurrection of His son. It is a time where we are reminded that Jesus gave all he had, laid down his life, so that we would know how much God loves us and yearns to be reconnected with us now. I am always humbled by the grace that he shows me. God surely knows that I don’t always treat Him or others in a way that deserves His love, but I am reminded He loved me first, and always will, and that won’t change.
It is very much like the reminders we receive only a couple of weeks later when we are blessed with the privilege of celebrating our ANZACs. We are reminded that so many people have died that we can be free, now. Deserved or undeserved, our service men and women give up everything so we can be free. Thank you so much to those who were able to give the time to march in honour of those who have fought and died for this privileged freedom. It was a true blessing to see so many of our community marching and on the sidelines supporting and honouring our fallen and current service men and women. As a school we say thank you. Thank you for the sacrifice that you have made so that we can continue to learn truth and positively contribute to our world.
So, my prayer for our community this term is that we would appreciate those who have given their life for us when we did not even know them, so we could make the most of the opportunities given to us. I pray that we can enjoy all the moments we are blessed with, not just the in-between moments, the holidays zones, or the easy-working-out-how-we-planned-it moments. All of them. All of them are a blessing and a privilege that our gracious God and our faithful diggers have sacrificed for us to have. So, knowing that we have received this greatest of all love, let’s “rejoice always; pray without ceasing; in everything give thanks; for this is God’s will for us in Christ Jesus”. (1 Thess 5:16-18).
Blessings,
Jonno
