Chill, God is Good!
Wow! Under 20 degrees in Houston. No electricity in our area for now, but still a trickle of water and full gas, so it’s all going to be okay. It is so odd to see the Houston environs blanketed with snow. Close as we are to the equator we are just not used to this. We will remember this as the strange year when the last days before Lent were frosty. Sing it with me now:
I’m dreaming of a white Ash Wednesday.
Not like one we have ever known.
With the power stopping
and water pipes popping,
causing all of us to moan.
I forget the rest of the words. I will not easily put many thoughts together today, because I am left to typing this out with my thumbs like a “text.” I hope my power returns before long so that I can use my regular laptop for tomorrow’s reflection. But I will introduce what themes might come through the days of this week.
As you may know, I have been unpacking thoughts week by week on the scripture verses anticipated for the coming Sunday Liturgy. This means that we will look into the Bible lessons assigned for the First Sunday in Lent. I will list just a short section from each element of the menu, what we call the Sunday “Propers” and we can begin to form a general collective theme:
From the Collect of the Day:
Come quickly to help us who are assaulted by many temptations; and, as you know the weaknesses of each of us, let each one find you mighty to save.
From the Old Testament Reading:
“When the bow is in the clouds,” God said, “I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth.”
—Genesis 9:16-17
From the Psalm:
Show me your ways, O Lord,
and teach me your paths.
Lead me in your truth and teach me,
for you are the God of my salvation;
in you have I trusted all the day long.
—Psalm 25:3-4
From the Epistle Reading:
Christ also suffered for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, in order to bring you to God. He was put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit.
—1 Peter 3:18-19
From the Gospel Reading:
Jesus was in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts, and the angels waited on him.
—Mark 1:11
Given these ideas, imagine you were giving the message this Sunday. Do you see the several ways you could develop it? What I see is an involved, saving God: aware and of the complications and miseries of the human struggle, and with the compassion actively to join the human round, engaging the creation, bringing about a solution, and showing a better path.
Okay, so as we start this Lent, with an icy Ash Wednesday, let it warm your heart that God has no interest in leaving us on our own. Rather, God is involved and interested.: giving signs of our covenant with the Almighty, the One mighty to save, the Way-shower.
Looking for a moment just at the lines from 1 Peter, we know that God is involved with us even to the point of death. Though in God’s transcendence, the Righteous One is removed from any suffering, for love’s sake, God suffered, and by his death cleansed the unrighteousness, made us alive in the spirit, and brought us to The Most High. Christ accomplished a union that could never otherwise have been.
However icy is our beginning of Lent, feel the spiritual warmth of God’s fire in your heart, and move into these holy, forty days with gratitude. Be thankful in Christ that he sees you, he knows you entirely; his response is unhesitating love and a sure spiritual solution. Oh yes! Let’s have a Lent of thankfulness.