Weekly Pastoral Message prepared by Rev. Murray Adamthwaite
for Sunday 13th March 1997

From the Pastor: The Resurrection III

An unusual sticker on the rear window of a car read as follows: Commit random acts of kindness and senseless acts of beauty. The adjectives and the nouns hardly fit together, we might say, for it is normal experience for bad behaviour to be "random" and "senseless". Hence the stock explanation for wicked behaviour is often in terms of "derangement", "a sick mind", or "a psychological case". I often wonder to myself, if this type of explanation is valid, why such conditions can't equally produce unusually good behaviour. Ever thought of that? Such an unusual combination reminds us of one thing: a radical change in our inner constitution is necessary in order to be the sort of people God's standards require. Here is where Christ's resurrection comes in. One of the beautiful benedictions of the New Testament is in Hebrews 13:20-21, wherein God promises to bestow the power for every good thing to do His will, through the same power by which He raised Christ from the dead. No, we don't need some strange psychological condition to commit random and senseless acts of kindness, but His risen power gives us a new "normality" whereby such behaviour is the regular issue of a transformed character. Are you a "normal" Christian living by His power?