Hi Church and greetings in the name of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ,

Is it just me or does it seem like nearly everything we undertake in life today is complicated? It’s been like this for a while, hasn’t it? Remember the old VCR’s that were programmable, many still use them and do so successfully…for me however, all I could use them for was to watch a movie. I couldn’t program it to record a show, in fact I couldn’t even set the time. No. My VCR blinked “12:00″ all day and all night long. Clearly however, while still in use, VCR’s are almost from a different era and again, for me at least, things aren’t necessarily less complicated. The designers of more recent gadgets have gotten smarter and made them “Al proof” and as such I have a bit more success. I can actually program most clocks now a days .

However, as you might expect, I don’t really want to talk to you about electronics or modern day miracles. Rather, I’d like to simplify things. I remember being asked one time, “Have you ever noticed that when birds fly in a vee formation that one side of the vee is longer than the other?” I thought about it briefly and answered, “Yes, it does seem as though often one side is longer than the other”. So the person asking the questions said, “Why do you think that is?”. This gave me pause. Surely I thought there must be some scientific reason…maybe something to do with areo-dynamics, or perhaps something innate to nature whereby younger males were forced to fly in the rear. I mean it’s clear that one side of the vee is longer than than the other and everything happens for a reason, so surely there must be a fact unknown to me to explain such a sight. I considered all that and more and then answered my friend, “No, I don’t know why, do you?” He smiled and said, “Because there are more birds on the longer side”. So that was the joke, there was no deep thinking involved, it wasn’t complicated and truthfully couldn’t be simpler.

Again, however, I’m not here to discuss either gizmo’s or bird formations, rather something of significant concern…Salvation. I fear that sometimes we make it complicated and as such perhaps even unattainable. Perhaps in our minds Salvation is blinking 12:00 all the time. I mean surely something that important must be hard and certainly more complicated than a VCR…right?  Wrong.

I was watching the news this morning and they reported that the recently deceased Senator Kennedy had written the Pope a letter. In the letter he told the Pope that he had dedicated a great part of his life to helping those with less. He also asked the Pope to prayer for him. Now, not that it matters, but personally I believe that the Senator did spend much of his life trying to help those less fortunate than himself. I think he was a good man. He sinned like everyone of us and I didn’t see eye to eye with him on many issues, but one thing I for sure don’t want to do is judge him. Because I know that as I judge him so will God judge me and with all my imperfection that’s a thought that doesn’t sit well. Nonetheless, I continue to digress.

As such let me cut to the chase. Will Senator Kennedy, or for that matter, anyone that you can think of who has departed this earthly plane be in Heaven when it’s all over and done with? He will be and so will any one else you can think of who is deceased if he and they had believed in and had faith in Jesus Christ.

That’s why I’m writing today, I want everyone who reads this to know just how simple it is, how terribly uncomplicated it is to achieve Salvation. The Apostle Paul wrote to the church in Rome and in Chapter 4, verse 3, he said ”…Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness”. I highly encourage each of you to find 10 minutes today and read chapters 3 and 4 or Romans.

What you’ll discover is that all this nice things we do (which are good and we should continue to do) are not how we achieve Salvation. To the best of my knowledge, Christianity is the only organized belief system that doesn’t require you to physically perform some duty or tasks or series of obligations. No, Christianity is much simpler…not at all like modern cell phones that I can’t use for anything other than taking and receiving calls.

It truly is that simple friends. Believe in God. Believe that Jesus is the Son of God. I imagine that perhaps some of you may say. “surely, I must do more than believe”. To that, all I can respond is, “show me in the Bible”.

These goods things that Christians do aren’t to prove to God that we believe. That’s backwards. We do those good things because we believe and it’s simply a natural evolution of our belief.

Be blessed and believe and be saved!

Al