GO ON LOVING ONE ANOTHER IN CHRIST!

THIS IS TOO NECESSARY TO FORGET!  I may have put up this picture before - no apology if I did!
The world and the Church is so short of love.   It is so full of schism.     We call it 'Denomi-nationalism', but it is still a deceitful way of enjoying disunity.   UNITY and the experience of being ONE BODY, one Family, was what Jesus had in mind.    But the Enemy has been consistently busy in ensuring we have all found excuse to have our own 'camp' our own BRAND of Christianity.      Even the ROMAN Universal Church has suffered split and schism, and we have all followed on in such a way as to make it almost impossible to demonstrate the Commandment  to LOVE one.another.     Look where you will THIS is hard to find.       Add to this 'national' and 'cultural' differences and you have a CHURCH more diverse, divided, and dispersed within itself than the world, after BABEL was destroyed.
But JESUS said - 'All men will know that you are My disciples, if you love one another (if you keep on showing love among yourselves )' John 13v35
Two thousand years later we find ourselves with so many considerations that might just restrain us from demonstrating love to anyone, let alone another Christian!!   Ephesians 4

We are no longer FREE to love like children, indeed I begin to wonder now, at the end of seventy years on the planet, what a 'child' is really free to do!      JESUS says unless we are LIKE little children we cannot enter the Kingdom of God.     What did He mean ?       Children were innocent and unaware of all the sins of adult human life,  and freely demonstrated their affection and innocence.   THAT is getting harder and harder to find as world society changes radically annually, and 'children' via the Internet and TV are almost adult from birth, with the definite danger of being cheated of childhood and all that it means.    The photo to the right shows that innocent affection between two trusting friends - they have no restraints.     They are free of knowing cultural or tribal differences, growing up in a multinational family, all attending church and praying together in a Christian atmosphere free of denominational bias or tradition.

ONE OF THE THINGS we try to reveal here is that in the sight of GOD all men and women ARE equal.    There is no different whatever in his eyes between an African, Asian or European, or north or south American.    No difference between a Kenyan or a Nigerian, or a Kikuyu or a Luo.  GOD loves - cares about - us all.     He went to the CROSS for us all, that we might ALL be Saved from our sin, and inherent impurity of moral and motive..  He did not die for one MORE than the other.      In is HEART He sees those who have accepted Him in Christ as One Family with Him, and all those who have not believed or trusted in him as longed for potential members of that same family.
TOMORROW I am to share with the Mothers Union of The Anglican Church of Kenya at our local Cathedral of St. Matthew.     I shall be sharing the need to love Widows and Orphans - not just Anglican ones but those of any persuasion in or out of the Family of God.      I shall need your prayers.    I want them to open their homes, their hearts and their lives to God's Love for all the needy around us in this Town of Eldoret and its surrounds.     Homeless children alone in the whole area are said to amount to more than 80,000!!!

LEARN from the little children around you while you can - and then kneel down and forget you are a grown up, a man or woman of experience and knowledgeable wisdom, and just ask God to help you LOVE - even your enemies!      Even the deformed and challenged that are close by, often hidden away ashamedly by their families.    To open your home, your wardrobe, your store-cupboard, your LIFE!
MANY in sections of the Christian Religion recognise the period leading up to Easter as a time of FASTING; of going without - a season of Self-denial.      BUT GOD in His word ( seen in Isaiah 58v5-14) sets out a very different kind of fast to that of going without a cigarette, a bar of chocolate, or sugar in your tea.       His kind of fast is not just for a 'season' but for all of your life.     It is what is meant by 'Laying our life on the Altar - alive and whole....Romans 12.
REMEMBER - this world is NOT our home - we are on the way Home in another place.   And Heaven is a Beautiful Place, full of glory and GRACE.     No special segregational areas there on ANY account - we will ALL be together in UNITY and LOVE without reservation.    I am looking forward to that, as I hope YOU are.            But even here and now we can work toward such a state of being, and the Holy Spirit within us can and will enable every willing heart to do so.

Have an open hearted, open handed week ahead.      THE KING IS COMING.

Love you all in Jesus our Saviour

John and Esther