3rd April, 2009

Outreach Media's April poster:

We used to wonder if the world was round or flat. Nearly 500 years ago Ferdinand Magellan nailed that question.
He got in a boat and headed west. His ships arrived home three years later...from the east! Ever since, the world’s been getting smaller.

In 1938 Howard Florey read Alexander Flemming’s paper on ‘Penicillium notatum mould’ and wondered whether
penicillin could be extracted in sufficient quantity to fight bacteria. His team didn’t stop for weekends to solve the
question. On Saturday May 25, 1940, they nailed it. Out of eight infected mice, the four treated with Penicillin survived. The other four died. Millions of lives have since been saved (including this author).

On May 25, 1961, President John F Kennedy declared he would land a man on the moon before the end of the
decade. Many wondered if this was, to make a bad pun, ‘lunacy’. But in 1969, when Neil Armstrong descended to
the surface of the moon saying, “One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind” he nailed those doubts.

At the 2000 Sydney Olympics, track athlete Marion Jones nailed all five events she competed in. Except we couldn’t help wondering if she was running ‘clean’!  Turns out she wasn’t.

Life’s full of important questions. Sometimes you get answers, sometimes you don’t. The most important question we’ve ever asked is, ‘Does God love us?’. Thankfully, this was nailed by Jesus a long time ago. You see, Jesus wasn’t an unwitting or unwilling victim when He was crucified or nailed to a wooden cross by Roman soldiers. The Bible makes it clear that the whole event was part of God’s perfect plan to pay for sin. It says: "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". (1John 4:9)

And: "God shows His love for us in that while we were still  sinners, Christ died for us" (Romans 5:8)

Jesus’s death on the cross was no accident. It was God’s greatest answer to the greatest ever question.

So if you’re ever wondering if God loves you, then look to Easter. To Good Friday when Christ died and Easter Sunday when He rose again, victorious over death.

For more information or to see how your church can become involved in displaying the posters, visit Outreach Media's at www.outreachmedia.org.au