March 2016

As we have entered our third month for 2016, we seem to be running to catch up with all that is going on around us. This month we find two famous celebrations taking place in the same month. First there is Saint Patrick’s Day which celebrates Saint Patrick who cleared the snakes out of Ireland. While some think this means literal snakes, the more likely scenario is the celebration of driving paganism off the island as Ireland became a Christian nation. Anyone who has studied Christian history has read that Saint Patrick first went to Ireland as a captive slave and that after gaining his freedom willfully returned to Ireland to proclaim the Gospel of Jesus Christ and liberated the island from the stranglehold paganism held them in. In short, through the preaching of Jesus Christ, Saint Patrick presented all that listened an opportunity to be free from the bondages they found themselves in. Bondages undergirded by pagan beliefs, cultural values and norms, as well as the bondages of sin. Through the proclamation of the Gospel, Saint Patrick lifted the cloud of oppression hovering over the Emerald Isle. 
The second thing we observe in March of this year is Easter. Easter celebrates the resurrection of the Jesus Saint Patrick proclaimed. We celebrate a resurrection that announced to the world that death had been defeated and allows all who proclaim Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior to boldly ask the same question Paul did: “Oh death where is your victory? Oh death where is your sting?” (1 Cor. 15:55) Both Saint Patrick’s Day and Easter commemorate deliverance. Deliverance from the sins of our old life that so easily entangle and allows us to bask in the beauty of the proclamation “Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. (2 Cor. 5:17)

As we repose in the knowledge of what a personal relationship with Jesus Christ promises and delivers, let us not be lulled into the notion that reposing means to be sluggards. Let us emulate the efforts of Saint Patrick and strive to help those we come into contact with find the deliverance that is found only in our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Like Saint Patrick, we find ourselves besieged on all sides by beliefs that contradict the message found in the Gospel of Jesus Christ. The paganism Saint Patrick dealt with was perhaps not as subtle as the paganism we deal with, but they are equally dangerous. In the modern world we often hear “shush, saying there is only one way to God is not politically correct or very tolerant.” Such a statement is worthy of the snake that appeared in the garden. It sounds reasonable but is contrary to God’s word. 
This month as we celebrate a Christian hero and the person on whom Christianity is built, let us not shy away from telling the world that “there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.” (Acts 4:12) In doing so, just as Saint Patrick drove the snakes out of Ireland, we fight the snake that opposes truth and beauty found only in Jesus Christ. 

​Have a blessed March, 
Vic