Because Christ is here...

Every Friday during summer school (except for the Friday that they didn't have classes because of the typhoon), the students took a trip. One Friday, we went hiking at a place not far away. It was a beautiful kind of part with walking trails and a church. A pastor there came a few years back to work with the community and make it a place of retreat and renewal. It had been a community kind of shut off from the rest of the island. No young adults stuck around. It was only elderly people and young children. In a video we watched there, some of the people in the area shared that they had felt abandoned and hopeless. Then this pastor came with the good news about Jesus Christ. The pastor got the community members involved in making murals along the pathways. The pastor provided the church as a place to meet together. The pastor hopes that the land can be a kind of "promised land" for people who are looking for hope. And we know that only Jesus Christ can give true hope to a person.

One quote that really struck with me from our visit there, was one person who shared in the video, "Because Christ is here, everything has changed."

That is a great testimony to what Jesus Christ can do in a community and in a person.

I love that verse from 2 Corinthians 5:17: Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!

May we look at our life and our heart and say the same,"Because Christ is here, everything has changed."