Letter from the Minister

Dear friends,

There’s something in the human DNA that makes us want to be first and this innate desire cuts across ages, ethnicities and cultures. We want to be first in line for concerts, we want to come in first for a race or to be first in tests or assessments. There’s something special about that word ‘first’.

The first two months of the church year are usually observed as the Season of Creation. During this time, many churches hold annual harvest festivals and services – a tradition which dates back to the Old Testament, when at harvest time each Israelite family dedicated
the best of the best to the Lord. ‘‘I have brought the first fruits of the products of the soil, which you, O Lord, have given me,’’ they prayed at the altar (Deut. 26: 8-10). By offering their firstfruits, the Israelites proclaimed that everything they had, even their lives, was given to them by the Lord.

The apostle Paul referred to Jesus as the ‘‘firstborn of all creation’’ and ‘‘the firstborn from the dead’’, which celebrates the supremacy and sovereignty of Jesus in life and in death. Taking it a step further, James applied Paul’s description of Jesus as the firstfruits to us; that our very lives can be ‘‘a kind of firstfruits’’ of God’s creation (James 1:18). Offering the best of yourself usually comes with a cost – the cost of
time to be first in a concert line; the cost of training to come first in a race and the cost of study to come first in a test. So it is with the cost of
discipleship and that cost is a testament to one’s faith.

As churches, what firstfuits do we offer to each other and to our communities? As an individual, what is the best of yourself – the best of the best – that you offer to God in this new church year?

A prayer for God’s grace to enable us to always bring our firstfruits to him:

“Take, Lord, and receive all my liberty, my memory,
my understanding, and my entire will; all I have and call my own.
You have given all to me. To you, Lord, I return it.
Everything is yours; do with it what you will.
Give me only your love and your grace, that is enough for me.”
St Ignatius of Loloya

With love and blessings

Georgina