BULLETIN ARTICLE
29 December 2019
TRANSFORMED TO BE A BLESSING
We have come to the end of 2019 and the end of our Bible teaching and learning from the book of Genesis. It is good now to take stock of what we have learned from the Word of God and what the Holy Spirit has impressed on our hearts to work out in our Christian lives. Has this resulted in a new call to service? Or perhaps, a call to act with grace and compassion in our Christian lives? Each one of us will take away different Bible teaching points and it is worthwhile to reflect on them so that the Word of God having been taught does not return back to God empty. Here is my personal reflection.
A framed 6 cents postage stamp issued by the United States in 1969 sits on my table. On the bottom of the stamp, Apollo 8 is emblazoned. Apollo 8 was the first mission to take man to the moon and back. The iconic photo on the stamp is the earthrise taken by the American astronauts as they orbited the moon on Christmas Eve 1968. The crew of Frank Borman, Jim Lovell and Bill Anders shared their impressions in a public broadcast and they read a passage from Genesis. On the stamp, these four words are written on the photograph of the earthrise. “In the beginning God…” Seven months later, on July 20th, 1969, the Apollo 11 mission landed the first men on the moon. This stamp serves as a vivid reminder for me to take a worldview that we are created beings. God made man and breathed life into him. We did not just happen as a result of organic molecules or chemicals coming together in a gaseous charged atmosphere. It all begins as narrated for us in Genesis. It starts with God’s creation. There is a God and he created the universe and the world and he made man in his own image. Man was made perfect and man was made to commune with God his creator. Until the fall of man in the Garden of Eden that is, when sin entered the perfect world and destroyed this perfect creation. If we take the Bible as the revealed Word of God, the first 3 chapters of Genesis becomes the Christian worldview of creation of the Universe and particularly our earth. The rest of the Bible is then the redemptive and continuing story which ends with a new heaven and a new earth as described in the book of Revelation. Since I believe in the God of creation, I have to do my utmost to make him known. This is best declared in The Navigators mission and purpose made by a young Californian Dawson Trotman in 1933: “To know Christ, make him known, and help others to do the same”.
God’s grace is the theme that stands out in Genesis. Abraham was saved by grace through faith. He was counted as righteous because “Abram believed the LORD, and he credited it to him as righteousness” (Gen 15:6). Today, our faith in Jesus Christ gives us this same standing before a Holy God. We too, are saved by grace and justified by faith – Eph 2:8. Our 2019 theme verse “All peoples on earth will be blessed through you (Jacob) and your offspring” is fulfilled because “the blessing given to Abraham might come to the Gentiles through Christ Jesus” (Gal 3:14), son of David from the line of Judah. How can I be a blessing to those around me? What good works does God want me to do for him for I have been “created in Christ Jesus to do good works”?
