September 28

I have a vivid memory of the end of the summer after I became engaged to my wife.  She spent the entire summer on a mission trip to Alaska.  You cannot understand the implications of this unless you know my wife.  Any temperature und 75 degrees is cold to her.  She spent the entire summer working with children and camps in Alaska.  I remember a letter where she described swimming in a glacier fed lake.  The way she described it, there was not much swimming involved on her part.  She told me she felt like a popsicle when she came out.  The August day we met her at the Philadelphia Airport; it was about 98 degrees outside.  We all were waiting to see her come off the plane (this was thirty-plus years ago when you could still do this).  I will never forget seeing her for the first time since May.  She was wearing a turtle-neck sweater under a brown vest suit. 

I didn’t care that she was dressed for the winter in the middle of the summer; this was a sweet reunion for us!  There was a sweeter reunion that took place in my life about fourteen years earlier.  It was the reunion between my righteous Heavenly Father and me.  Paul described it this way: “And all things are of God, Who hath reconciled us to Himself by Jesus Christ, and hath given to us the ministry of reconciliation.  To wit, that God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto Himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them; and hath committed unto us the word of reconciliation.  Now then we are ambassadors for Christ …” (II Corinthians 5:18-20a).

The word, “reconciliation” literally speaks about a reunion between individuals that had been separated before.  My separation with God was a permanent situation until Jesus Christ left Heaven to die in my place.  At the moment I place my faith in Jesus’ payment on the cross, and His resurrection from the dead, my sin debt became His, and His righteousness became mine!  It doesn’t get any better than that!  There is nothing on this earth that compares to that!

The thing I want to stress to you today is in that last verse … we who have been reconciled (re-united with God through Jesus), now become “Ambassadors” of reconciliation to others.  Don’t keep the wonderful message of reconciliation to yourself!  Tell all those who are apart from Christ that He is waiting for them on the back porch of Heaven right now!  God is not willing that any should perish.  He wants to save the world, and His love is big enough for the worst sinner!  Tell someone about it today!