17 Then the high priest and all his associates, who were members of the party of the Sadducees, were filled with jealousy. 18 They arrested the apostles and put them in the public jail. 19 But during the night an angel of the Lord opened the doors of the jail and brought them out. 20 “Go, stand in the temple courts,” he said, “and tell the people the full message of this new life.”
21 At daybreak they entered the temple courts, as they had been told, and began to teach the people.
I’ve been thinking a lot about life and death recently what with spring being right around the corner, and being in the midst of Lent looking forward to Easter and all that it promises.
And remembrances of life and death so closely intertwined by days on the calendar in this coming week for me. Frank’s Dad will be observing the 4th anniversary of his wife’s death on the 20th. So he has been at the forefront of my thoughts and prayers. The very next day, I’ll be celebrating my son’s 12th birthday.
It’s nothing new. Every day, someone dies and someone else is born. And those that love them are changed forever by their presence in their lives.
It’s been this way since Adam and Eve were expelled from the Garden of Eden. We’re born. We live. We learn. We love. We die.
When a child is born, we celebrate the joy of new life in our midst. When someone dies, we grieve the passing of their presence in our lives, not realizing right away that their presence lives on within us.
When the apostles were jailed, then freed by the angel, they were told to tell the full message of this new life to the people they found in the temple courts.
This wasn’t a life received once. It was a life returned to them. While physically mature, there was as much reason for them to celebrate as there is when we rejoice over the birth of a baby. New life had been received.
As Christians, we have each received this gift of new life. Do we stop and remember to celebrate it as the undeserved gift that it is? We have been granted a precious gift. Every day that we wake up is another opportunity to rejoice over that gift, regardless of our circumstances or how we might wish they were different.
As writers, God has granted each of us the unique ability to share the full message of this new life in the words that we write and the stories that we create.
In Deuteronomy, we are told that the commandments we’ve been given are to be upon our hearts, impressed upon our children, talked about at every turn, and tied as symbols on our hands and foreheads.
It is only when the message of salvation permeates every aspect of our lives, including our writing, that we are truly obedient to the angel’s command to tell the people the full message of this new life.
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