Text of the week

So the Olympic Games Rio 2016 are over. It’s certainly been a success story for Team GB, and there has rightly been great excitement surrounding medals won and world records set.

You may have seen that the organisers took, as their theme for the games this year, ‘A New World,’ promoting the concepts of transformation through sport and changing the world for the better.

Sport certainly has a power: it entertained us; it inspired us with great sporting achievements.

However, as the Olympic flame went out in Rio, the stark reality is that we still live in the same world – a world of poverty and injustice, terrorism and violence.

Our Text of the Week is words of Jesus spoken from his heavenly throne: “I am making all things new.” That is not merely a noble aspiration, but an absolute statement of divine intent. We do live in an imperfect world; a world badly in need of radical change. The problems come from within each and every one of us.

A new world is what Christ gave himself to create.

His cross is the beginning of it; heaven is its completion.

So why not get with the programme now – and seek the change that Christ offers, and be the change that this world needs.

This present world will always be imperfect and broken until Christ returns. But we can, nevertheless, by allowing Christ to change us within, become change-makers ourselves. We can live with real hope of a better world.

A new world is coming - we’ll be ready for it when it comes if we’re living that new life now.

Rev. David Randall,

Free Church of Scotland