Kobayashi
Last week the delayed Olympics from 2020 finally started. It must have been quite something for all those athletes to actually be in Tokyo one year later!
Unfortunately, due to the pandemic they will not be cheered on by thousands of supporters as the incredible venues are empty, except for the world’s media.
A day before the spectacular opening ceremony (I loved the drones), the show’s director Kentaro Kobayashi was fired!
The BBC reported that: Footage of Mr Kobayashi from the 1990s recently emerged in which he appears to make jokes about the Holocaust. Japan's Olympic chief Seiko Hashimoto said the video ridiculed "painful facts of history".
For Mr Kobayashi, his behaviour from over 30 years ago, caught up with him, which led to his dismissal on the eve of probably the biggest event of his career!
I’m pretty sure that all of us can look back over our lives and remember some things we did or said that were wrong. We may ‘grade’ our wrong doings, but the truth is, we’ve all messed up.
This got me thinking about wrongdoing, and how God views it. The Bible calls it ‘sin’, and thankfully there is some good news...
“Everyone has sinned and fallen short of God’s glorious standard, and all need to be made right with God by his grace, which is a free gift. They need to be made free from sin through Jesus Christ.”
In other words, God does not look at you and me, and the wrongs we have done and dismiss us! The opposite is true.
Because God loves, knows and sees us, He is aware that we have all messed up. So, in an incredible gesture of grace, beyond anything we could do ourselves, God stepped in. He sent Jesus to deal decisively with the ‘sin’ in order that we can be free and start a personal relationship with God.
The starting point for us is to simply acknowledge that we have messed up (the Bible calls it confession) and then to believe and trust what the Bible says Jesus will do.
This invitation is permanently available, for everyone, completely free of charge, and as a result deletes any past wrong doings, for those who accept it. Seems like a pretty good deal to me!
God bless
Gary Bastin - Hope Community Church leader