Jesus Christ: The Alpha & Omega - The Same Yesterday, Today & Forever

It’s been over 12 years now since Barbara and I travelled to the UK in August of 2012 for our 25th anniversary. We did something that I will never do again: we decided to travel to 10 different cities in Ireland, Scotland, England and finally Wales, in 21 days.

I still can’t quite believe we did that. I did all the driving. At the end of the trip, which was very lovely, we had to cross from Wales to go back to Ireland in order to catch our plane home from Dublin.

We had been visiting Barb’s Welsh relatives in Tony Refail, and they had given us a few cautions about the ferry ride from Wales to Ireland.

“It’s a tad bumpy at times” said one relative. “Could be mite upsy-downsy, though nothing like it’ll be in January”, said another.

Not quite appreciating the British and Welsh cultural tendency to make molehills out of mountains,we boarded and parked the car on the ferry and went to the lovely restaurant area, where we and others enjoyed a good lunch.

We’d decided to splurge a bit at the end of the trip so we had arranged to have our our cabin. Once the fairy got moving, things started out quite calmly. We roamed the deck outside the restaurant for a while, and then decided to go to our cabin.

Within about 15 minutes we were in the thick of the channel between Wales and Ireland, and the boat was going up and down 16 feet about five times every minute. It was, to us, unbelievable. These photos don’t do the experience justice. This conveys what it was like a bit better.

If you’ve ever been in that type of situation, you would appreciate what that type of thing can do to your stomach.

Barbara succumbed to the upsy downsy and afterward lay down. Somewhat in shock, with Barbara now asleep in the cabin, I decided to walk around the rather large ferry to see how others were dealing with the current challenge.

What I heard as I walked by the other cabins were children crying, people quite audibly losing their lunches, And many others, mostly adults lying on the floor, clinging to it for dear life. This was all over the ferry. I made it to the restaurant area, and there was no one sitting or standing there.

Mercifully, after about 45 minutes, we docked in Ireland, drove the car off the ferry, and made our way to Dublin. I had never experienced or imagined a more physically disconcerting and disorienting scenario.

The closest parallel my brain went to as I reflected on the event is the emotional and mental turmoil I experienced before discovering that there is a God, before learning about Jesus, before becoming grounded in the Word of God, The Bible. I chose the passages that were read today because I truly believe it to be the bedrock of Christian faith. The anchor of our spirituality.

The solid ground of everyone whose life is carefully and thoughtfully turned over to the Lordship of Jesus Christ. There is an eternity locked up in these words: “Jesus Christ...the same yesterday and today and forever.” And I believe God would draw us into reflecting on what this means today as we face the turmoil that the world is in, and as we face our own challenges that threaten to destabilise our worlds.

Some might look at this passage and begin to think that this suggests that God is static and rigid. Sameness means that for some. But the key to understanding this passage is actually from an earlier sentence in our reading in verse 5: “God has said, "Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you”.

Wedding vows. I’ve heard a lot of them. I’ve heard very creative ones. I’ve heard very odd ones. Very individualised ones.

For our wedding Barbara chose Naomi’s words to Ruth: “Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God”. That floored me on our wedding day as it does today. The best wedding vows share a common theme with Barbara’s vows to me. “I am yours. I will be with you always. I will not depart.”

Why? Why do couples make this statement to each other? It’s because commitment and constancy and fidelity are required for a relationship to flourish.

Very recently I got really, really sick with an absurdly bad cold. I could do next to nothing for myself. For at least 5 days straight Barbara took care of me. She made me tea, brought me meals; she took all of the stress out of the picture and that allowed me to just rest and heal.

I gave her this necklace of a couple hugging as a thank you. She’s the gold one. Her response was a big hug and these words: “To love, honour and cherish, in sickness and in health”.