C R E D O
I believe in one God and Father of all,
Who is over all and through all and in all.
God, who is rich in mercy, makes us alive through Christ's suffering and death, expressing His unsurpassable love and kindness to us, by raising us up into the heavenly realms and seating us beside Christ Jesus.
Even though we had followed our own thoughts and desires and were dead, through no efforts of our own, but through His purpose in Christ, the One He loves, we are forgiven and delivered from death.
His purpose is to bring all things in heaven and earth together under Christ one Head.
He unites us by the Spirit, whose power strengthens our inner being.
We become one body with one Lord, one faith, one baptism.
Through His power at work within each one of us, He is able to do immeasurably more than all we could ask or imagine.
To Him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever.
Amen.
(Penny Williams - Adapted from St.Paul's Letter to the Ephesians)
The Suffering Servant
See, my servant will succeed he shall be exalted and lifted up.
There were many who were astonished at him -so marred was his appearance, beyond human semblance,
but many nations will marvel at him, even kings will be speechless;
for they shall see and understand what they had not been told. Isaiah 53
Who has believed our message? And to whom has the power of the LORD been revealed?
For he grew up before him like a tender plant, and like a root out of dry ground;
he had no form or majesty that we should look at him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.
He was despised and rejected; a man humbled by suffering and acquainted with infirmity;
and as one from whom men turn away their eyes. he was despised, and we held him of no account.
Surely he has borne our infirmities and carried our diseases; yet we accounted him stricken, struck down by God, and afflicted.
But he was wounded for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities;
upon him was the punishment that made us whole, and by his scourging we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have all turned to our own way, and the LORD has laid on him the guilt of us all. He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth;
he was led like a lamb to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent, he did not open his mouth.
Without protection, without justice, he was taken away; who among his generation gave a thought for his fate, how he was cut off out of the land of the living for the sins of my people?
And they made his grave with the wicked, and with a rich man in his death; although he had done no violence, neither was any deceit in his mouth.
Yet it was the will of the LORD to crush him with pain Though the Lord makes his life an offering for sin, he will see his offspring, and shall prolong his days; through him the will of the LORD shall succeed.
After the suffering of his soul he shall see light, and shall be vindicated for my righteous servant shall justify many; he shall bear their iniquities.
Therefore I will allot him a portion with the great, and he shall share the spoil with the strong; because he exposed himself to face death, and was numbered with the transgressors;
yet he bore the sin of many, and made intercession for their transgressions.
(From Isaiah - Chapters 52 and 53)