The mission goes on…
The film, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, is a classic Stephen Spielberg adventure of high drama, family interplay and intrigue, with a dash of mystery thrown in for good measure.
It tells the story of an ordinary American father who has a close encounter with an alien spacecraft and thereafter feels compelled to search out a specific location in the United States and will do anything to get there in order to experience personal fulfilment and complete the mission. In other words he becomes a man with a mission and nothing will deter him from succeeding.
I came across the film the other night while I was browsing on Amazon Prime and the movie’s plot got me thinking – how many of us are men and women on a mission, relentlessly determined to succeed no matter what the cost?
You see it struck me that all men and women who have given their lives to Jesus Christ are men and women on a mission and consequently we all have a question to answer – how intentionally and determinedly are we pursuing that mission?
Arguably there has never been a better time to pursue the mission of Jesus Christ, given to us in the ‘Great Commission’ of Matthew 28 –
18 Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19 Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”
The mission isn’t rocket science and the good news is we don’t do it alone. Unfortunately right now many Christians may well think the mission is on hold until we get through this Coronavirus outbreak. Some Christians will adopt the attitude that ‘this situation is not normal, so I will not act normally until normality returns’ – when in fact there has never been a better time to be normal in Christ – the mission goes on!
Two great quotes from C S Lewis sum up our situation. The first is this; ‘The truth is of course that what one regards as interruptions are precisely one’s life’. In other words right now whatever you are doing and wherever you are – this is life – life has not been suspended until some time in the future. Life is not being interrupted – living with the virus is life!
The second quote really needs no explanation and it’s this; ‘Reality is not neat, not obvious, not what you expect.’
The Lord never promised his followers a trouble free life but what he did promise was that in the midst of our troubles (our reality) he’s there too. So the Great Commission is not postponed like The Premier League or The Olympic Games for some more suitable time in the future. It goes on.
It’s our job, through what ever means we can, to seize opportunities to witness about the Lord Jesus Christ to whomever we are able to get in front of whether that’s 2m apart in the supermarket queue or on social media, Zoom or indeed within your own household.
We need to lead others to a Close Encounter of the Jesus kind – today.
Just a thought… Blessings, Carlton.