Friday 6 Apr 2012

Friday Reading: Luke 20:22-25

Key Verse: Luke 20:25
25  And he said unto them, Render therefore unto Caesar the things which be Caesar's, and unto God the things which be God's.

Devotion:
I am sure that I have come up with some odd things for Good Friday in the past, but no stranger than calling Good Friday “good” when we are remembering the crucifixion, death and burial of our Lord and Saviour. So why choose these verses? You only have to look around you and wonder what all the fuss is about to then begin to see why. The world seems to have gone mad with making any celebration into the largest selling commercial venture that they can. They have ripped the true meaning out of Easter and replaced it with the same “holiday spirit” that they have replaced our remembrance of Christ’s birth with!

Long gone is the time we can spend thinking about what God has done for us. Long gone is the coming together of people to have a look and see what that bunch of Christians is doing down at the church on Good Friday. Instead we have all manner of things pushed in our faces about bunnies and enough chocolate to float the entire third world with – and yet love is being left out of it somehow. The commercial thrust was supposed to be toward bringing families together and allowing them to celebrate something special; but instead that love has been torn out and replaced with a requirement to buy gifts for people as if it were their birthday again.

Don’t let me put a dampener on our Easter celebrations. I fully intend to celebrate Easter; but not as another commercial “day of reckoning” but rather with people that I want to be with – because they celebrate the same love for Christ that I do… and if they are busy, well I will be out there trying to tell someone else about the true meaning of Easter!

Maybe this is one of those times that Christ was speaking of when He said that we should separate ourselves from the world. Leave the things of this world to their own devices, “give to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s”. We don’t have to get caught up in trying to bring worldly possessions and worldly ways into Easter because this is not a time to celebrate the world and what it has done for us – this is a time to celebrate all that Christ was willing to do for us and all that He actually has done for us. He willingly gave it all up for us just so that we would not have to be conformed to the worldly ways. So Give “unto God the things which are His”. Love was first shared by Christ with us; let us therefore show Him some of that love that He first showed us!

Points to Ponder:
Do you get church and the world mixed up?

Then why get God’s ways and worldly ways mixed up?