"We are a church family seeking to grow as missional disciples, sharing God’s loving grace and truth in words and actions with our families, friends and communities."
The temptation to think that if we just work a little bit harder, if we just hold on a little bit tighter or keep control a little bit better, we will save ourselves. Sometimes the teaching we need to hear is rest. Let God be God, don’t try to take that job on for yourself. Rest in Christ, be honest with your weariness and trust that God will carry you through.
“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”
Sometimes we just have to start. Make a choice. Stop for a moment the excuses and the noise of fear and the questions and follow. If we want, there will always be another reason not to believe, another question we want answered, another reasonable reason to wait. But sometimes the gift, the answer, the truth is found in the choice to begin and to follow and see where Jesus leads us.
“If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what shall a man give in return for his soul?
Why did God become part of creation? Jesus the fullness of God, through whom all things have their being, is made in humble, perishable, flesh and bone. With all our weaknesses and all our needs and temptations. And yet he lives with a light that we know is in us but we struggle to let shine. His teaching has authority and his words hold eternal life and here, at the end of his life, he is alone. Cannot he who saved others save himself? Jesus weeps in the garden alone knowing his last earthly task is a terrible one, and it is what he came into the world to do, to face death for us.
I glorified you on earth by finishing the work that you gave me to do. So now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had in your presence before the world existed.
Living the faith of Christ takes time and practice. Our baptismal covenant calls us to perseverance and to return to Jesus the way when we wander. To me this song is a reminder that even our faith is not our own work alone but God’s grace. We need to know we are never walking alone and need to be reminded constantly and consistently of how to follow in that way. We cannot hear Jesus’ words of comfort and encouragement enough “I have called you friend”, “I will be with you always”, “Where I am there you will be also”
You have always been precious to God. From before you were born, from your first breath in creation, through all your failures and in each joyful moment. When we have felt alone, like we have had no one or like we needed no one, that whole time, we have been wrapped in God’s love coming to us and leading us on our way.
During Lent we always pray for those who are preparing for Baptism and Confirmation, their teachers and sponsors. Historically it is a time when new believers are welcomed into the community of the church and spiritually this season of resurrection and new beginning is where our faith begins. What does it mean to get ready to believe, to commit ourselves in action and to dedicate our trust to God who is revealed to us in Baptism which is our participation in Jesus’ death and resurrection?
Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.
They song begins by asking “Am I born of the vine or of the thorn? Am I holden to the sky or to the storm?” We often live in cycles of drawing near to God in faith and wandering on our own paths. Abiding as members of the true and living vine or twisting our lives into a crown of thorns. Jesus is risen! The war is over! And yet, we still live in the struggle. The grace we need is still working itself out with us and in us and through us. Jesus is risen and we are still becoming. With the Spirit of hope and resurrection we still come through our own journeys of loss and sacrifice but walk that path following Jesus who leads our way to victory.
And all of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord, the Spirit.
Today is always open to new opportunities for healing and love. This is what it means for God to be “almighty”, that there is never an obstacle that God’s grace cannot overcome. If today your heart beats and you draw breath then you do so in the hope of Christ who is with you. The possibility of today is never held back by the weight of yesterday.
If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord; so then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s.
Here we are again. It’s a message we need to hear in a multitude of ways from as many different voices as we can. You are not alone. Your broken heart is unique, but broken hearts abound. Your tears are your own, but tears are shed every day by a multitude. You are not alone. God does not abandon you in your hurt and your grief, and will not leave you forever in this season. If you are feeling alone, maybe the Lenten practice for the day is to make one phone call, to reach out- and to hear these words again. If you aren’t feeling alone, maybe it is to call someone you think might need a friendly voice.
The theme of being alone is one that comes up a lot in Lent. We think of the path that Jesus walked, the pain and the fear in his own prayer in the garden. His request of his friends to stay awake and pray with him. And his cry to God in the garden. We know the pain of isolation, the temptation to stay in isolation and the fear of rejection in returning to relationship. God calls to us to let us know that we are not alone. That our first relationship with God’s very self is already restored. We don’t have to be afraid. And from there, we can hold God’s hand as we risk relationship with others.
Then he said to them, ‘I am deeply grieved, even to death; remain here, and stay awake with me.’ And going a little farther, he threw himself on the ground and prayed, ‘My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me; yet not what I want but what you want.’ Then he came to the disciples and found them sleeping; and he said to Peter, ‘So, could you not stay awake with me one hour? Stay awake and pray that you may not come into the time of trial; the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.’ Again he went away for the second time and prayed, ‘My Father, if this cannot pass unless I drink it, your will be done.’
