Why Jesus Came

Richard Rohr, a Roman Catholic priest, says that Jesus identified his message with what he called the coming of the “reign of God” or the “kingdom of God,” whereas we have often settled for the sweet coming of a baby who asked little of us in terms of surrender, encounter, mutuality or any studying of the Scriptures or the actual teaching of Jesus.

I invite you, as we move from Christmas into a new year, to consider that the suffering, injustice and devastation on this planet are too great to settle for any infantile gospel or to let your faith stop with a baby Jesus. What we call the Incarnation, God becoming a human being, becoming one of us, strikes directly at the heart of evil and corruption in the world. The Creator of the universe came to us as a helpless baby. He lived a perfect life of perfect love. When he died, he died taking on our sin and exposing the evil of our world. Then, the end of the story was not defeat. It was the defeat of death when he rose up from the grave and gave his power to the coming of the kingdom of God into our world and into our lives.

Jesus lives in us and invites us to live in the kingdom growing in our ability to love others and to work with him to do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with God.

Thank you for doing justice and loving kindness by giving to our Global Missions Offering. We gave more than our goal of $700. Now, as we enter into the New Year, let’s give more than our 2011 goal of $150,000 for our ministries here at New Hope.