First Lord's Day Sunday in 2024

Today is the first Lord’s Day Sunday in the year 2024. Today, many who have celebrated Christmas, are no longer with us to celebrate this Special milestone of the generous and undeserved offering of life. You and I, regardless of how simple or difficult our lives may be at the moment, regardless of how strong in faith or weak in faith we live at present, having been given this day of life, God and Father God alone, chose to have you see this day.

The Lord God never looked at you and counted all your good deeds, your charitable offerings, your beautiful heart and sound mind, nor your sacrifices and faithfulness to the things of Church, as criteria or collateral for Him choosing you. Absolutely nothing of your good or bad, informed the Lord God in any way. It is all God’s doing and choosing and that alone brings us to our humbled, surrendered knees, as we bow low before our Heavenly Father. We bow with deeply reverent and grateful hearts, full of hope and good intentions to serve the Lord with greater zeal, more obedient minds and much more loving hearts.

Indeed, in many Christian places, this is the day which encourages and facilitates such offerings to God. Today is known as Covenant Sunday in many denominations, a day when life-commitments are made. It is a day for making covenant and renewing covenant. For many, it is a time of offering oneself to God to be able to do whatever He has given us to do and be for Him, right here in our frail, weak mortal bodies.

On this day also, many believers celebrate the Feast of the Baptism of Jesus. For them, it is the day which signifies and marks, in their religious calendar, the end of the Christmas season. However, we shall touch on this a bit later in the week.

On this First Lord’s Day, as we come with ready and prepared hearts and minds to rededicate our lives to God, I invite you to journey with me as we follow in the steps of Joseph and Mary who have taken Baby Jesus to Jerusalem for the first time, to present Him to God. Here is a familiar verse of Scripture, but is it as living to us and in us as it ought to be? Does it hold personal significance for us, calling and challenging us to the act of purification?

Here is the particular Scripture verse. When the time of their purification according to the Law of Moses had been completed, Joseph and Mary took him to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord. Luke 2: 22

We are told many things here, but our focus has been cast upon three living images of lights. These deal specifically with Mary, Joseph and Jesus, as the verse indicates. During this week which I shall call, Covenant Week, we will be perfectly guided and particularly steered in correct and right covenant making and keeping, attitudes, responses and ways.