This week we commence a new series, ‘Abide In Me’. Whilst this phrase doesn’t appear in the Scriptures until John’s gospel, it has been God’s yearning from before the foundation of the world. As the great prophetic anthem declares, ‘I will be your God, and you will be my people’. God longs to have a people of his own who dwell with him, and he with them. Moreover, he has prepared and provided everything necessary, in Creation and in Redemption, for this mutual and eternal abiding to take place, and he is determined that it will.

Into the pervading restlessness of the world and the unsettled but stubborn hearts of men and women comes the call from Christ to ‘abide in me… abide in my love.’ To seek life and fulfillment anywhere else, amounts to death. Only in this ‘abiding’ with God in Christ will we find rest for our souls, and bear fruit that remains. This is God’s desire and delight! Beneath the restlessness and confusion, is it not ours as well?