Jesus in the Center

We have had enough of margins, always circling,
Rarely reaching to the core.
We are worn with endless shuffling, half asleep,
Our boots the proof of restlessness.
There is One who always beckons—
“Come to Me, all who need rest.
In the center of My friendship
All are barefoot; all are blessed.”

In His mercy, God has given to this remnant people joys that make this journey sweet. We have been blessed to know the fundamental truth that we are the “creatures of His hand,” the special act of divine intention, not the accident of chance. In a world that doubts a purpose, we assert a clear beginning, even as we preach the End.

We are graced to know the Sabbath, without which this world’s whirring gears would grind to an unproductive halt. Here we see and sense the rhythm for which our lives were planned and made. Sabbath keeps us by reminding us each seventh day that life is grace, and grace is all.

We are made anew through living out the values of a kingdom in which health and holiness go hand in hand like children playing in the sun. Food and water, rest and trust—these are gifts that build life back into our years.

And we know that when our threescore years and ten are done, we will wait the call of the Life-giver, who will show again His resurrecting power.

But in all these there is a Center. Suffused through each central Adventist belief is One we ought not miss—we dare not miss. As we sing Creation hymns; as we preach a time of judgment; as we stop our work at sundown; as we honor God with our bodies—we must hold to Him who was, and is, and always will be central to the remnant’s faith.

It is Christ who forms His remnant, not our choices nor our living. It is deep acquaintance with His heart that brings coherence to the truths we teach, the songs we sing, the mission and the message that now goes around the world, as Ellen White once said, “like streams of light.”

Let us covenant with Him who loves to keep covenant with His people that we will make knowing Jesus chief among the things we do. Every sermon, every lesson, every keeping of His holy Sabbath, must put Him at the center. “He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy” (Col. 1:17, 18, NIV).

The church I want to belong to always puts Jesus at the center.