One Message: Christ, His Love Is Here For You

By Bruce Cameron

      The order for Baptism suggests that the pastor lay his hand on the head of the child being baptized while the congregation prays the Lord’s Prayer. While we are always including others in our prayers to our Father, I have learned to appreciate this gesture as a way to especially remember these children in our prayers. Saying the Lord’s Prayer over their heads, I can focus my thoughts on their need for bread, their forgiveness, their leading, their deliverance.

     In a similar way, the theme selected for the 2007 LCMS Convention is an opportunity for us as a Synod to focus our minds and thoughts on a specific Word from the Lord, and to focus those thoughts and prayers on our Synod. The Convention Theme is One Message: Christ . . . His Love is Here for You.

The theme verse is 1 John 4:9-11:  “This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.”

These are not just words to hang on a banner or write on the title page of the convention workbook. These are words that every Christian lives by, words that express concisely our message to the rest of the world.These words can also express our thoughts, hopes, and prayers for our Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod, our congregations, our convention delegates, and our leaders.

     We know God’s love for us, for each other and for the world.  We have seen it and celebrate it in Jesus Christ, God’s Son sacrificed out of love for us, so that we might live through Him.This message is true for every person who enters the convention hall and it is true for the next person that they meet outside the hall. It is true for the next person we meet outside the doors of our own churches.

The old rule of Bible study said:,Apply yourself totally to the text; apply the text totally to yourself.What a wonderful thing it would be if we could spend a whole week together applying ourselves to this text and applying this text to ourselves—to ourselves as a Synod and to ourselves as people of a world that has been loved and atoned for. We can love this world by bringing them this message.

     Think of a convention filled with the message that Christ . . . His Love is Here for You. This is our ONE message. What a fine way to remember God’s love, his unquestionable, unshakable love, for the line of people at the microphone, the people at the podium, the people at the table on each side of us. What a fine way to remember God’s love—eternal, costly love—for the people outside of the reach of the LCMS, who perhaps by God’s grace we COULD be reaching.

     There will be occasions in the coming months for us to remember the convention delegates in our prayers, and to call for them to remember the church and the world in their prayers and deliberations. What a wonderful theme for all of us to keep in front of our eyes: Christ’s love is here; it is certain; it is for each of us and for the next person as well.
     This is our message. It is our vision for our convention, our vision forSynod. And it is a promise—already paid for!—for all the world.