Dunston

Happy New Year!

Some of you will have houses like mine, where the whole festive season has been heavily populated with people singing songs to get ready for Oliver! the musical at Framingham Earl at the end of February. Even if you are in a different (I didn’t say fortunate) category, you might very well know the show, or the original 1960s film. Many of the songs are of course very famous, like “Food glorious food” or “Consider yourself”.

Another one you might know is “I’d do anything”: in fact, this was the name that the BBC also gave to the reality show where they were looking for new people to play Nancy and Oliver in the West End. In the song, the Artful Dodger and Oliver tell Nancy and Bet all the things that they would do to win their love, from painting their faces bright blue (this was some time before Braveheart or the Smurfs or Avatar) to fighting with terrifying Bill Sikes, and many more things in between. At the end they sum it all up with “I’d do anything, anything for you!”

Recently I’ve been reflecting on a line from a modern song that we have sung a bit in church, and I have bumped into in other places as well: “Blessed are those… whose joy it is to give it all for Jesus, and for Him only.”

 For a long time I have agreed in my head with the idea of giving it all for Jesus, and I have tried my best to do that in my life and ministry, but this song has reminded me of something I think I might have lost track of: to give it all for Jesus.

I think people try and give their all for lots of things. You might do it for family, or in your work, or for a cause bigger than yourself, and there is a lot of good in all of that. But in thinking about giving it all for Jesus, I’ve noticed the other things I can give it all for which look a bit like Jesus, but are actually something a little different. Maybe I think I want to give it all for Jesus, but in truth I want to look good, or at least feel good about myself. Maybe I want the bishop to think I am one of the successful vicars. Maybe I want as many people as possible to like me. Do you begin to see how I can make all of those look a bit like giving it all for Jesus?

In the end I need to give it all for Jesus not because there is blessing in doing that, which I believe there is, and certainly not because I have to do it to make him love me more, or even at all, because I don’t. I need to do it because Jesus is worth it, and only Jesus; it is “for him only”. There are lots of ways to start a New Year, and lots of resolutions we might struggle a little bit to keep. One of the simplest, but most life-changing, is to begin saying to Jesus “I’d do anything, anything for you.”

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