Praise the Lord for this wonderful season of Lent. The Lord blessed us with a very winsome day yesterday. I watched the retirement speech by Peyton Manning, one of the great athletes of our time. It was both moving and inspiring. I was provoked to run the race well and fight the good fight indeed. In the evening Alice and I walked in the open fields and streets of "Our Town" The Canadian geese are back, numbering in the hundreds. The Lord is orchestrating them to sing His praises and making melodious sonnets. Our hearts were gladdened. I spoke to a dear friend who lives in the West Coast. He faced a great tragedy on the 18th of July 1991. The Lord gave him a second chance. He lives there, serving the Lord and glorifying Him. He is battling some precarious health problems. He shared with me that the Lord has given him a wonderful peace through it all. Praise the Lord.
Some of our daughters formally observe Lent and some do not. I remind them that Lenten season is a journey with Jesus to Jerusalem .. to the Cross, to the grave and to the event of Resurrection. Eugene Peterson uses in his rendering of the gospel, The Message: "Time's up! God's kingdom is here. Change your life and believe the Message." What simple and glorious words to speak!
This is our journey, a humble, modest, glorious journey. While in Boston we met some very wonderful servants of Jesus who are going through some very serious health concerns. Despite their trials, the Lord has infused them with great sense of triumph and victory.
I recently read the story of a man by the name of Russ. Russ is 87, and he's living with lymphoma. Lymphoma has enlarged his tonsils and shown up on CT scans as spots that march from his throat down into his abdomen. Lymphoma has also "enlarged his heart" (in the best way) and shows up as delight in each day, even the days in the week after chemo. His enlarged heart shows up as love-filled looks into the faces of the people who fill his life, people who cuddle up next to him to warm him when he shakes with a chill that no one else feels. Russ's enlarged heart, so to speak, shows up as public prayers of noisy gratitude to his Lord, Jesus, and as prayers of quiet humility in bed at night as he holds his wife's hand and prays aloud on behalf of both of them.
Russ's journey is a humble one, and a remarkable, even glorious one. Those who surround him are learning so much from him as he follows Jesus from baptism to death, tempted along the way to despair, and shouting about God's reign as he goes along. No story describes Russ' pilgrimage better than one that happened in the bitter, metallic-tasting week following another chemotherapy session.
Russ is a big man, 6'1," 200 pounds, muscled by World War II and a life of hard work, but weakened by chemotherapy, and so he struggled one evening to get out of his recliner. Instead, he slipped ever so gradually and ever so uncontrollably to the floor. Lee, his wife of 63 years, watched helplessly. Her 85-year-old arthritic knees wouldn't let her do anything else but watch as he slid down gently to the floor. Russ lay there on the floor of their den. He couldn't get up. He couldn't even do what Lee urged, roll over to get up on your knees, and back up into your chair. He couldn't move.
"The strangest feeling," he said later. "The strangest feeling not to be able to move!" What did he do then? Cry out in frustration? Sink into despair? Hunker down in humiliation, weeping, "This is what I've come to?" No. Although he may have been tempted to do all of those things, what Russ did was laugh. He laughed wonderful, tender, silly laughs. He laughed as he lay on the floor. He laughed at his helplessness, and then, so did Lee.
The neighbors laughed, too, the ones who just happened to telephone to see how he was, and who were summoned to help. They all laughed as they worked to get Russ up off the floor, and laughed the hardest when a sort-of vertical Russ fell back into the chair, but squarely onto the lap of the man helping him.
From his hospital bed the next few days Russ talked with others about that night. He laughed again as he spoke about how he couldn't even move, he was so weak. And he spoke poignantly about how it felt to be so helpless. Then he told everyone who would listen about his deep sense of gratitude for his life and about his profound sense of peace about dying. "Lord, Lord, Lord, thank you for this wonderful day," Russ prays day after day. "I feel terrible," he'll tell me, "but I've had a good week." We realize that we can learn about how each of our journeys can be enriched by Russ' example of Christian humility and Christian joy, this journey following Jesus, repenting and believing the good news about the nearness of God's reign.
May Jesus, the Risen Lord, grant us us strength for the journey, so that we may laugh with delight on Easter morning.
In Christ,
Brown
https://youtu.be/W5LriRAk5to
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