Letter from Jon, September 2020 

 Dear Liberty Family
 
In the midst of a very severe trial, their overflowing joy and their extreme poverty
welled up in rich generosity
2 Cor 8:2
 
These are the words that Paul uses to describe the Macedonian churches.  They are words I have read countless times but only this week when I read them did I really appreciate the seeming contradiction in what Paul is saying.  In one sentence he brings together ‘severe trial’, ‘extreme poverty’, ‘overflowing joy’ and ‘rich generosity’, and it left me wondering how these things can exist together.  We don’t easily associate trial with joy, or poverty with generosity, and yet this is what Paul testifies to in these young Christians in Macedonia, and indeed it is what we see in the life of Paul himself, a man who knew intense suffering and yet, at the same time, great joy.
 
This Sunday coming we start a new preach series on Paul’s letter to the Ephesians where we will be looking at what it means to be truly rich in this life and beyond.  I love this letter because it is so full of rich language: ‘fullness’, ‘lavished’, ‘immeasurably more’, ‘glorious inheritance’, ‘incomparably great power’, ‘boundless riches’.  Paul is trying to convey something of the riches of God that are available to us in Christ, and at the time of writing he is in prison in Rome.
 
I am aware that the in the days ahead there are those in the community around us, and indeed within the Liberty family, who could face severe trial and poverty, as the longer term effects of covid and lockdown start to ‘bite’.  In the midst of this is the Church, a community of God’s people, united in Christ, whose joy and generosity is not determined by outward circumstances but by the indwelling presence of God himself. 
 
As we begin to study Ephesians together and to uncover some of the richness that is ours in Christ, a richness that goes way beyond any material wealth, my prayer is that we, the Liberty Family, would know what it is to live with overflowing joy and rich generosity as we support each other and bring hope to those around us.
 
‘And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge – that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God’
Eph 3:17-19
 
Much love
 
Jon