Update 6

Dear friends                                                                                        
How are you doing? We’ll all probably revert to the typical default response of ‘I’m fine’ or ‘we’re doing fine’, which, as you know, very often means Frustrated Insecure Neurotic and Emotional or Feelings I’m Not Expressing. In reality many are fine but also many are not fine and I think being able to say both honestly is important.

We’ve just come through Mental Health Awareness Week and what was highlighted was the massive impact the lockdown has on all our mental health but especially on those suffering from mental health issues.

The Bible has a brilliant way of revealing to us the complex and cooperative nature of our lives when David wrote ‘For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well’ (Ps 139.13-14). The complexity of our nature and structure is described in terms of a ‘knitting together’; that is, every aspect of our being is connected in some way to another so that mind, body and spirit are all related and impact one another for that reason. When we are mentally unwell it affects us physically; when we are physically unwell it affects us mentally; and when we are spiritually unwell, if affects us holistically.

So then, It is important to ‘keep well’: to look after each aspect of the God-given lives that Jesus has redeemed by his death on the cross for us. It was Abraham Kuyper, Prime Minister of the Netherlands between 1901 and 1905, an influential neo-Calvinist theologian and also a journalist, who said, ‘There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry, Mine!’ So we must give our lives holistically to the Lord day by day, whether ‘fine’ or ‘fine’.

And just as the physical body cooperates and relates, so too we as Christ’s body do the same. Paul says, ‘The body is a unit, though it is made up of many parts; and though all the parts are many, they form one body. So it is with Christ’ (1 Corinthians 12. 12). It’s tremendous to hear how we are keeping in touch and please do keep that up. It’s more important than you know.
So whether ‘fine’ or ‘fine’, May the Lord bless you; Please stay in touch, keep tuning in to services, listening to the CDs, joining the Zoom Bible study, and remember though we don’t know what the future holds, we absolutely do know who holds the future!
With all our love and prayers

Colin and Jessie

Rev Colin L Macleod