“Remain In Me” (John 15:4)
"Remain in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.” (John 15:5)
You are warmly welcome to Kakumba Chapel as we celebrate Mary’s Day, led by our Mother’s Union fellowship. May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.
Our reflection today comes from the long teaching Jesus gave during his final week on earth as he comforted his disciples. Jesus is fulfillment of the sign recorded in Isaiah 7:14 where the virgin ‘will conceive and give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel’; He is God with us. The virgin turned out to be Mary – the young lady that received special grace and was privilege to nurture the Son of God here on earth. It is really inspirational to remember that God can and will pick an earthly vessel for such a high vocation and task! May the Lord give us the grace to walk before Him ready for such or any other noble task in our families, work places and in the nations.
Jesus knew that there are many distractions and winds that would like to pluck disciples from him; they include academic and cultural philosophies, personal challenges or disappointments, or even calamities beyond our intervention. In the recent Kyambogo STEAM Festival (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics), I had the opportunity to join the discourse on Space Science. I noted that the pursuit of limitless knowledge can also be a distraction from being rooted in Christ. Can you imagine people attempting to count the number of starts? Later astronomy has confirmed the testimony of the prophets that the stars are without number. The limit that has been reached is due only to the limited power of our telescopes or the limited time of exposure of the photographs, not to any limitation in the number of stars. Yet to us today, as to the Psalmist of old, it is a token of the infinite power and knowledge of God that “He determines the number of the stars and calls them each by name” (Psalm 147:4).
As we read about outer space in the Bible, it is notable that the heavenly bodies were inexpressibly glorious, and they were all the handiwork of Jehovah - without power or vitality of their own - and man, not by any inherent virtue, but by the will and grace of God, was superior to them in importance. Thus, there was a great gulf fixed between the superstitions of the heathen who worshipped the sun, moon and stars as gods, and the faith of the pious Hebrew who regarded them as things made and moved by the will of one only God. Resist every from of distraction and heed the Word of Christ: He emphatically called on his disciples to remain in Him in order to bear much fruit.
God bless you all.