Looking Back
Minister's Letter: December 2024
Dear Grace Church,
It has been a full month since I wrote the last Minister’s Letter in November.
We had the Ladies of Grace Christmas Craft event. I loved seeing all the decorations made over the coming weeks.
We had the first Men’s Winter Braai. And it won’t be the last. We were fed a sumptuous feast.
We had our Community Carols. We had a full house and an evening full of Christmas joy. Please do pray for some of the follow up conversations happening off the back of that outreach event.
And we just had our annual joint service with the Baptist. It was good to worship with our brothers and sisters in that fellowship.
New Year’s Eve is often a time of optimism. It’s an opportunity for a new start. We can leave behind the old and look for the new!
Yet my hope is that 2025 will be a year of Looking Back. At least in these monthly letters anyway. But I don’t mean looking back over the last year. Or even looking back over our own lives. Instead, we will open wide the doors into the history of the people of God.
Church History is a treasure trove that we neglect at our own cost. In Hebrews 12.1, we are told that those saints who went before us on the path of faith are a “great cloud of witnesses”. In its immediate context, it refers to Abraham and Sarah, Moses and Rahab, and many others. But I think it’s also fair to describe those saints who have gone before us throughout the history of church as part of that “great cloud of witnesses” who have walked the pilgrim path ahead of us.
And there is so much we might learn from them, in both their study of the Scriptures and their lives following the Lord Jesus.
As we examine snippets of their teaching, we will see the rich feast that is available to us. When we read the Puritans, you find saints whose hunger would not be satisfied with a shallow reading of God’s word. They drilled down deep and excavated the precious promises of God for us to feast upon. We will both learn from their example but more importantly, we will hopefully grow in the grace and knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ from the gems they have mined for us.
On alternate months, we will then have brief biographies of saints throughout the history of the church. The stories of saints who have trusted in God through trials have galvanised the church throughout the centuries. We will hear of the trophies of grace, whose lives were transformed by encounters with Christ. We will explore the lives of those who walked by faith in God through the mountains and valleys.
It is a comfort to see footsteps because we know someone else has been where we are. And they have walked through it. The Christian life is hard. But it is not something we do alone. We travel with our church family, both present and past.
And as we look back, we will be invited to look forward. To look forward to the hope of glory that so animated the hearts and minds of those who went before us.
Happy New Year Grace Church!
Yours in Christ,
Ciarán R. Kelleher
December Treat
On the first Sunday of January, we will be singing this song, a wonderful celebration of all that Jesus has done for us.