For Kirwan Uniting Church's Keep in Touch newsletter 28 April 2019

After living here for 24 years, I’m finally a real Australian  -  we bought a Victa mower.  The church council know this, I told them so that they can stop worrying that the manse yard is bringing the church into disrepute. It’s a groovy battery cordless thing. It’s rained pretty well ever since we bought it, so I’ve only been able to do the back yard and the side strip down to the bus shelter. But, early days, I’m very pleased with it.
The bible has a bit to say about grass, most of it gloomy, like it withers. Weeds, on the other hand, seem to grow prolifically. Pity they didn’t have brushcutters in the bible. A cordless one of those is on my wishlist. We have a petrol Stihl down south which would demolish a State Forest in half an hour but (a) it’s overkill for the manse yard and (b) it’s in Cedar Creek.

Here’s St Peter (1 Peter 1) quoting Isaiah 40: 

“All people are like grass,

and all their glory is like the flowers of the field;

the grass withers and the flowers fall,

but the word of the Lord endures forever.”

That Word, says the evangelist John, was in the beginning with God, was God. Is God. (John 1). And became flesh, “making his dwelling among us”. God’s word, then, isn’t only full of promises concerning the future - that death  has been overcome - but is alive and present and affirming those promises now, in all of our circumstances, withering grass of our disappearing youth or flourishing weeds of age and infirmity. Unlike those only temporal circumstances, it endures forever. “And”, Peter goes on to say, however long ago it was, “this is the word that was preached to you”.