The Flare: Times

It’s Monday! Wohooo! New week at work and school. Such a great day it is. Anyway we’re doing some changes to “The Flare”. Nothing major, we’re shortening it a bit. It will now be from 0700pm to 0830pm. So it’s only half an hour shorter. We're doing it to have the activeites more focused. We feel that there have been too much downtime and therefore we think shortening it is a good idea. We’ll still be able to do the same things; we’ll just have less of doing nothing. Hope this will make it more enjoyable for both us and you. 

How do you live your life?

Once upon a time, the English national football team had a manager called Sven Göran Eriksson. He didn´t have the best relationship with parts of the press (then again: who would…?). At one press conference before an important World cup qualifier, he was asked a long, complicated and very critical question from one of the journalists. Mr. Eriksson looked at the journalist and asked back: “How do you live your life? Do live it as well as you are speaking and writing?”

Does it really matter how we live our life? A children´s song on a CD we have at home certainly expresses that: “Be careful little hand, what you do”. But is God really a God who is spying on us, and writes down everyting we do, good or bad? Does he check if we are living our life as we are writing, meaning do we practice what we preach? Is God in reality just a Father Christmas, sitting in heaven, shaking his head over all our deeds and tut tutting while he finds a big red pen, crossing out our names in his book and asking himself “why do I even bother with this lot?”

Actually, God is not like that at all. The prohet Isaiah from the Old Testament gave the old Israelites this message from God:

Zion said: “The Lord has forsaken me, the Lord have forgotten me.” Can a mother forget the baby at her breast and have no compassion on the child she has born? Though she may forget, I will not forget you. (Isaiah 49, 15)

God has created each and every one of us, and he wants us to be his children. And like all parents, God wants us to have good lives. And the best life we can have is a life where we enter into a relationship with him, and let him work in us. God does not ask “How do you live your life”, but he asks “Do you believe in me?” A simple yes on that questions will open up opportunities for living a good life that we hadn´t even thought of. Because God is not Father Christmas. God wants to help us all to live a life for and through him.

What if...?

For some reason, reading crime books and watching crime drama is really popular in Norway around Easter time. No one actually knows why, it has just become one of those strange habits and traditions that people accept. But it kind of makes sense in a way, because, when you think about it, the Easter story we read about in the Bible is like a crime drama. And as in all crime dramas, one question that can be asked a lot is What if…?

What if Jesus had decided to come quietly to Jerusalem, with the result that the people would not greet him as king? Would the men that wanted to kill him then say that Jesus wouldn´t dare to oppose them, and just leave him be as some random bloke with dillusions of Grandeur?

What if Jesus had chosen not to go to the garden of Gethsemane, but instead chosen to remain indoors with his friends after the Passover meal? Could it then have happened that Jesus would not have been arrested? That he never had been taken to the chief priest, to Herod and Pontius Pilate.

Or what if Jesus had decided that enough is enough, that he didn´t want to go through what he knew was coming, and fled from Jerusalem?

And then the big question: What if Jesus never resurrected, and came back to life? What then would his death on the cross mean? Would it then be a Church? Or would Jesus just have been nother random bloke, condemned to death, right or wrong, more or less lost in the mists of time. Just a philosopher, but not a savior. Just a religious teacher, but not the Son of God.

But unlike most of the crime dramas we read or watch on TV, what happened to Jesus that easter in Jerusalem actually happened. He did enter Jerusalem in a way fit for a king. He did go to Gethsemane, and was arrested. He was condemned to death, and executed by crucifixion. He did go through it all, even though he was afraid. And most importantly of all: He did raise from the dead! This is what the apostle Paul wrote just 20 years after Jesus had died on the cross:

But if it is preached that Christ has been raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? If there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith. More than that, we are then found to be false witnesses about God, for we have testified about God that he raised Christ from the dead. But he did not raise him if in fact the dead are not raised. For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised either. And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost. If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men. But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. (1 Corinthians 15, 12-20)

He goes on after this (read it yourself!), but the point is: Because all this actually happened, and is not just a bunch of lies, death has no power over us, because Jesus once and for all beat death when he died on the cross and resurrected from the dead.

Happy Easter everyone!

Pulse Party

Hey again! Last Friday we had our Pulse Party! It was really fun. We had the old classic chubby bunnies, built towers and danced like someone who really can’t dance, but tries anyway because he was forced onto the stage to dance by people who thought it would be really funny. Though that last part might have been just me.

Anyway it was a fun event with people from all the different Pulse activities; we hope we can do something like it again sometime in the future. Thanks to everyone who showed up.