I recently listened a quote attributed to Nelson Mandela in the film ‘Invictus‘.   An enjoyable film with some really good thoughts and many one liners, worth watching and mulling over.

The quote “The Rainbow Nation starts here. Reconciliation starts here…Forgiveness starts here too”.    Too long and too many times we expect every one else to do the changing, this  quote brings home to me the responsibility for a nation, a people group, it  is not with the politician, or its business people or its educators but it starts RIGHT HERE,   that is,  in my heart, the new nation will not happen unless we as individual contribute to the advance and take responsibility beyond ourselves.

This is not an appeal for individualism but for a together understanding, that it is each one playing their part corporately that will bring about change and transformation.    It is in the process of forgiveness we find true humanity and responsibility and bring advance and change.

Well what more do I need to say it is a time when the church the ‘ecclesia’ of God, the lovers of the Christ, realise that we too need to take responsibility.     It is  a baptism of WE, and an experience of Together, a move from me myself and I to  “We”.      We have been born to become sons of God, into sonship,  we are to learn to live from inheritance rather than just live and draw on the grace of God, gaining an understanding of how the Father distributes and uses his stuff, as we mature we can be entrusted with inheritance, being the extension of the Father, doing what he would do?   The trouble is, in grace people get healed, delivered  and raised from the dead but Jesus lived his 30 years not simply from grace but from a sonship inheritance position.     Rather than us seeing our world from our own personal feelings we should begin to see  it from a corporate perspective, as this serves the Christ.      The Father has always only had one son in view, and will only always have the one son in view.    The people of God are to be the image and likeness of the Father and display the practices of the Father, as I have outlined in other writings the “…explain the Father…” as Christ came and did rather than us having our own trip and encounter, we are here to explain the father and encounter  him in the explanation.    Anything less than this is simply just about my trip in God, which means my next encounter needs to be a bigger buzz or greater impact than the last one to keep me in and believing God is there?   Gods’ purpose is much more, we have been invited  into an authentic relationship, to be his explanation,  authentically in our world.

The people of God seem to fallout and divide over experience, with irretrievable break downs, yet we are to be the model of reconciliation, being firstly reconciled to the Father then displaying and becoming that attitude in our world.   We are to develop an attitude of forgiveness, not just forgiving by numbers, first if my brother has anything against me, go to him, secondly and thirdly….  Forgiveness is seen as lives touch each other without needing to rely on a system of actions, but when a disposition of forgiveness, that explains the Father is displayed, “…forgive them Father they know not…” was Christs’ ultimate cry before he was crucified.      We are to be the LOVE of the Father in our world, not only being loved by the Father but we are to be the exact love in our world, so that the world might know….

In the film Nelson Mandela when asked about who his family was, says  “My family is very large. 42 million”.    Let us be baptised into a corporate experience that takes away individuality and allows us to be ourselves while also realising my family is ……millions?

Baptise us O God into a WE understanding and life style, a RECONCILIATION experience and life style,  a disposition of FORGIVENESS  “…it starts here…”   YOU, not one of us is an island or self-made, we are so interwoven into each other, a collage of many, it is supposed to be that way.   Self made is from another place,  it is certainly  not God and Christ Centred,  God is never singular,  yet our world tries to make the single the individual higher, God is always in more than one, God is never alone!