The Officer’s Blog
Major Drew McCombe gives his thoughts for Easter.
Major Drew McCombe
Resurrection Shuffle – God came back!
God did with the crucified Jesus, the dead Jesus, what God wants to do with us all everyday – resurrection! God came back
Good Friday took no one by surprise – if you know how the religious, political and economic establishment works, then you know you’re doomed to fail. The way Jesus disregarded the status-quo, eating and drinking with the tax collectors, the whores and untouchables, the way he reached out in compassion to the marginalised, the names he called the religious leaders, Good Friday’s bloody business at the place of the skull took no one by surprise. It was a good campaign while it lasted, the disciples told the women to go pay their last respects, take some flowers, the women peered into the tomb and God came back
When will we be accustomed to death’s defeat, when will we let its get into our minds and our living…God came back that’s the truth of the gospel and so it goes on.
Bev’s (Beverley McCombe) brother lost his first wife in car crash in which he was the driver, married for only a matter of 6 months or so…we were newly commissioned officers - first at the hospital, devastated, not knowing what or how to say anything to the wider family….. but at her funeral, as the coffin was brought in the band struck up ‘ever is the war cry victory’… God came back- death faded away ,and a great victory party started because the supporting congregation and centuries of handed down faith refused to defer to death.
They told him ‘Once a drunk, always a drunk’ – it’s like a disease, something genetic, in your family, something in your blood, no way out’ Then the ‘Salvation Army’ took him by the hand, loved him, said to him there is a way out. Noel Toner is an officer today and he attributes that to the fact that God is in the business of conquering death….God came back
Cancer, terminal, untreatable, nothing they could do, it was going to be curtains, she said I’ll live with it but I’ll be blowed if I’m going to die of it – I call it grit, she said it was because, even in her illness, God came back – her grit was more than emotional resilience, it arose from her Christian conviction and belief that God is in the death dominion business – in the resurrection of Jesus she said there is another way to live – not a resignation to the inevitable but an eternal way of life.
Who or what are we going to believe?
The world says adjust, adapt, get used to it, things happen.
Jesus arose and God came back – ours is not a faith based on a perpetuation of a dead man’s ideas – Jesus is alive
God did with the crucified Jesus what he wants to do with us each and every day.
Resurrection Shuffle – God came back!