Praise the Lord for
this new day. One of my granddaughters reminds me, "It is brand new
day". Alice and I traveled back to New York yesterday. The
Lord blessed us with a safe and sweet journey, traveling(with
stops) over 6 hours. Yesterday was Ash Wednesday. We have
entered the Lenten season of reflection, renewal, and rejoicing. I have
been listening to pieces from Handel's Messiah this morning: "He
Shall Feed His Flock", "I Know that My Redeemer Liveth".
The music and message of Handel's Messiah fill my soul, inspire my
heart, and cleanse my mind. Thank you all for your fervent prayers
on our behalf, standing with us as we sojourn as pilgrims on the road to the
Eternal City. The road that we travel was traveled by our Lord
Jesus, the pioneer and the finisher of our faith. Alice is going back to
Schooll to teach today.Our church Family in Marathon,
has been gracious to us in every way. They have cared for the
preaching and teaching and missional matters. Praise the Lord for
the way He provides His boundless grace.
During
the season of Lent we all think about Spiritual discipline and self
denial. Most of us think of giving up something when it comes
to Lent. For example, we often hear, "I'm giving up coffee,"
or, "I'm giving up chocolate," or, "That's nothing, I'm giving
up Facebook."
We understand about these habits.
Jesus said to his followers: "When you give to people
in need … when you pray … when you
fast." He assumes that you will do these things. As a follower
of Christ it will be a part of your life to choose spiritual disciplines like
this. He made this one central point: When you do them, don't ever
do them to try to prove to yourself or someone else how spiritual you are.
The only reason to engage
in the spiritual disciplines that we choose is because we have
a Heavenly Father who sees us, who longs to draw us close, and who wants
to reward us with the intimacy of his presence, with the tenderness of his
compassionate word to us, who wants to give us the grace that we need
for this moment. That reward should be so compelling that we would
even do these disciplines as difficult as they are. It is not easy to give
money when we know we might need it. In fact, we do need it.
It's not easy to pray, to set aside time and to stop our motion and the
self-management of our life and cry out in need. It is not easy to fast
and go without food and feel the pains of hunger.
In Matthew 5:11 Jesus said, "God blesses
you when people mock you and persecute you and lie about you and say all sorts
of evil things against you because you are my followers." I don't
know one person who said to themselves this year, "You know what I'm going
to do for Lent this year, I'm going to be mocked, lied about, and slandered;
that's my discipline for this season of my life." Yet a sovereign
God allows this type of discipline into our lives. Why would he do
that? How do we make sense of that? How would we even begin to
respond to that?
First of all, the spiritual
disciplines we don't choose, that are thrust upon us, are
described by James as trials of many kinds. Our trials will be different
from the trials faced by others. In other words, they can come in all
shapes and sizes, but they have this in common: they test our
faith. They knock us off balance, they make us wobble in our faith,
and suddenly we ask questions like, "God, where are you? What
possible sense could this situation have for me?" The many of kinds
of trials that James talks about are the trials that come to test our faith.
Last year a woman named Margaret Geary
made the news. She was an 85 year old nun who lives in a convent near
Baltimore. All of the other sisters in her convent were going to a three
day conference and she had to stay behind, so for three days she was left alone
in her convent. Shortly after they left, she came down from her room to
the kitchen to get a snack. She went to the refrigerator, pulled out a
jar of water that had celery sticks in it, and walked back to elevator, got on
and pressed the up button. The elevator went up about two feet and
then it stopped. She thought, "Uh oh," and she tried to pry
open the doors Right then the electricity went out. Then she
realized, "Oh, don't worry about it, I have my purse with me and it's got
a cell phone." So she rummaged in her purse, pulled out the cell
phone, and realized, "I can't get a signal inside this elevator
shaft." At that point she started to panic. Then she realized,
"You know what, I can either panic or I can pray. It looks like
I'm going to be taking a three day prayer retreat and I didn't have to reserve
the space." So she sat on the floor of the elevator and ate some of
the celery sticks and prayed, and then she drank some of the water and
prayed. Then she rummaged in her purse and pulled out some of the cough
drops down in the bottom and sucked on those, and prayed. When she
got tired she curled up and used her sweater as her pillow and put her purse in
her back to keep that from hurting as much, and she prayed. When the
other sisters finally got back three days later and got her out of the
elevator, they said, "What were you thinking? What was it like for
you?" She said, "Well, I finally realized God had provided for
me an opportunity to draw closer to him."
Please join us praying for Thomas B, the son
of very dear friends, who is battling some very precarious health
concerns. He is one of very dear friends and fellow sojourners in Jesus.
In Jesus our Lord.
Brown
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