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Bulletin 114 Date : 19th Oct 2007
Think Long Term - 1

Well I tried my best along with 1,000 other budding and not-so-budding photographers at the fourth Vienna Fotomarathon last month. I was entry number 5 as the picture shows. Our son, Andrew, who came a majestic 3rd last year slipped down the rankings to 17th but was still the top photographer using an analogue (film) camera. I was just behind him at joint 253rd.

Anyway, the point of this bulletin is that we need to think long term. My preparations for next year’s Fotomarathon start now. Andrew is already thinking of entering the Linz and Berlin Marathons and he pointed out that this year’s winner, Harald Adensamer, also won the event last year, so – practice makes perfect!

This got me thinking about God’s long term strategies and I want to explore this aspect of God’s nature and how it applies to us.

Turn to the early chapters of Genesis and you will find God makes a promise to Abraham (or Abram as he was then). In Genesis 12:1-3 God we find God’s initial promise to build a ‘Great Nation’ through 75 year old Abram and his descendants. As if this wasn’t mind-boggling enough, in Genesis 15:1-6, God goes on to talk about Abram’s heirs being more numerous than the stars in the sky (v5).

We know the story and how Abram and Sarai laughed at the thought of conceiving a child in their twilight years but that’s what happened when Isaac, whose name means ‘laughter’, was born. Unbeknown to Abram, this was part of God’s long term strategy to build a holy people. Interestingly, Abram never saw the final fulfilment of this promise, only the start of it.

Later on, God set standards by which His holy people should live when Moses was presented on Mount Sinai with two tablets of stone containing the Ten Commandments (Deuteronomy 5:22). Incidentally, have you ever wondered how many commandments were written on each tablet? The answer is probably not five (ask your minister for his or her thoughts).

In a similar fashion, Jesus appointed His disciples to be a holy people of which we, His church, are part. In Matthew 16:15-19 we see that Jesus did this as part of His long term strategy when He promised that ‘the powers of death shall not prevail against it’. What happened here was not a ‘flash in the pan’ but the start of something which would endure for eternity. See also 1 Peter 2:9.

Likewise, Jesus laid out the ground rules for life in Matthew chapters 5, 6 and 7. The inner qualities of the Christian are enshrined within the beatitudes (Matthew 5:3-12) and the outworking of the Christian life is seen in the following verses in what we call ‘The Sermon on the Mount’.

There are many ways of understanding the death of Jesus. Some may say it was a painful and tragic end to a beautiful life. However, the resurrection shows us that it was God’s long term investment in the world He came to save (Hebrews 12:2).

In the next bulletins, I shall explore how God’s long term thinking can apply to our own Christian lives and to our churches.