RURAL NORTH HEREFORDSHIRE, ENGLAND, UK (ANS) -- I will be preaching in two different country churches during easter Day, taking for my theme the statement made by the Lord Jesus Christ during the last evening he spent with his disciples before his crucifixion: 'Because I live you will live also.' I shall ask myself and others the question: 'Where will Jesus live and what kind of life will we be living as a result?' We will be reminded where Jesus will live, beyond his resurrection, if we say together the eucharistic prayer beginning: 'We do not presume to come to this your table, Lord.....', because we end that prayer by saying: '....that we may evermore dwell in him, and he in us.' Jesus will be living within us, once we have invited him to do so. Only yesterday I wrote the following verse, that I may choose to read as an introduction to my talks tomorrow:

Christ has died - Christ is risen - Christ will come again.
Death is past, the future's yet to be.
Christ's alive! Christ is risen! Christ is living now;
risen, living now - in you and me.
Jesus said, 'Because I'm living, you will also live;
each of you in me, and I in you.
Learn to trust, oneself rejecting, put your faith in me,
without me there is nothing you can do.'
If Jesus Christ's not risen, my faith becomes a sham;
my worship will become hypocrisy;
and no-one will believe me if I say that Jesus lives,
unless he's seen to be alive in me.
It's only when the Saviour lives, is seen alive through us,
and seen in actions we could not achieve,
and seen to be the one at work, so undeniably,
that other folk are likely to believe.
If I deny Christ entry so he cannot live in me,
it shows in all the ways that I behave;
and others who are watching note that I am seen to be
returning Jesus Christ into his grave.
But:
Christ has died! Christ is risen! Christ will come again!
the proclamation made each time we meet
in memory of him who died, who lives again for us,
to make the life we're living now complete.

Copyright 2008 Gordon Bailey