Tag: Lent

DIVINE GRACE & PRESENCE

There are two ways of living… One is the way of resisting Almighty God, and the other is the way of surrender to God’s eternal grace and steadfast love. Resistance to God brings anxiety and distress, restlessness and hopelessness. Surrender to God, however, brings inner peace and joy, true happiness and hope. It really is that simple.

The worldly person is always in a state of resistance and inner conflict. The spiritual person, on the other hand, has given up the struggle through their sweet surrender to God. For as St. Augustine famously stated in his autobiographical Confessions, “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.”

True religion, therefore, is about surrender, and a wonderful symbolic representation of this is the California condor. When it steps out off the cliff, it simply stretches wide its wings and floats in the rising air thermals. Likewise, as we yield to God’s grace through faith in Jesus Christ our Savior, we are freed to no longer flap our spiritual wings to exhaustion. Rather, by the uplifting power of God’s Holy Spirit, we are free to float weightless on God’s limitless atmosphere.

“Even youths will faint and be weary, and the young will fall exhausted; but those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles [and condors], they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.” – (Isaiah 40:30-31)

So, truly, all the weight in our hearts and minds can be tied in some way to our willful and sinful resistance to the Way and Truth and Life of God in our lives. The more you fight God, the lower you fall. The more you yield and surrender to him, the lighter you become and the higher you soar spiritually.

The Season of Lent is all about dying to our sinful rebellion, and rising up unto the abundant Life and Light and Love of our Heavenly Father. This is what our Lord Jesus meant when he declared in Luke 17:33, “Those who try to make their life secure will lose it, but those who lose their life will keep it.”

Consequently, as we move into Lent (meaning “length”) when the days lengthen toward springtime, may we ever seek to give up the fight, surrendering to the forgiveness and renewal of the Lord our God given freely to us in Christ. Moreover, may we also be ever mindful of God’s Holy Presence with us and for us in the here and now, realizing that we stand before the amazing Throne of the Eternal God each and every moment of our daily lives.

As the days lengthen and become warmer, may we come to understand more fully that the grass and flowers of the field, the trees and mountains, the rocks and rivers, Christ’s Word and Sacraments, as well as our hearts and souls, are all together the amazing Throne of God’s Presence. In reality, we stand before the Throne of God Most High now… Forever right now… So, for this Lenten Season, and for the rest of our God-given life, let us remember our most Wonder-Full Lord God every single day, the ever-present Source of all creation and salvation, in whom “we live, move and have our being” (Acts 17:28a).

Blessed Lent to All of You! Pastor Tim

CROSSES OF ASHES

The Church Season of Lent starts with the words “Remember that you are dust…”

On the day we call Ash Wednesday, we hear this annual reminder of our mortality in order to encourage us to turn toward God in self-reflection and repentance. In addition, this special day begins our annual spiritual journey of increased devotion in preparation for the coming of Holy Week and Easter. And of course, the seventh Sunday following Ash Wednesday is Easter Sunday, which celebrates the glorious good news of the Resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ.

I have to say that there’s something truly amazing about Ash Wednesday; something deeply compelling that draws us together for a special midweek service every single year. It’s more than just religious observance, and somehow more than just the beginning of Lent, because what we do and say on this special Wednesday has power. There’s gospel power for our souls when we receive the imposition of ashes on our foreheads and the proclamation of those solemn words, “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”

With this simple phrase on Ash Wednesday, we are reminded that we are mortal. Or as a very matter-of-fact social media post I’ve seen states, “We all came here by birth and we all will leave here by death.” Or in traditional poetic terms, we say we are “Ashes to ashes and dust to dust.” And as if hearing this were not enough, these words are literally rubbed into our faces! With an ashen cross upon our foreheads, our mortality is strangely visible for all to see, including for ourselves in the mirror — and all of this seems like bad news. So how is there gospel power for us on Ash Wednesday? How is there good news in all of this?

Firstly, we need to begin with the ancient past, with the Christian theology that we and the entire universe are intelligently designed and created by Almighty God. In other words, the universal scrambled eggs of the Big Bang did not just unscramble themselves without the cosmic fine-tuning of God over the eons. In fact, every fundamental constant of our universe (from the very first moment of the Big Bang) needed to be exactly tuned for all matter and life to exist. If anything was off by even the smallest infinitesimal degree, then we and all life would not exist. Therefore, the “dust” of our ancient beginnings is not a cosmic fluke. It was and is orchestrated, and fine-tuned on a razor’s edge, to produce the beautifully complex universe in which all life can flourish. So our lives are 100% wonderfully-made gifts from God, nothing less.

As the late Pope Benedict XVI famously wrote: “We are not some casual and meaningless product of evolution. Each of us is the result of a thought of God. Each of us is willed, each of us is loved, each of us is necessary.”

Because the energy, matter, space and time of the universe are continually shaped and molded by God our Supreme Maker, this means that our ancient evolutionary dust is a sacred and holy dust. And God’s grace and love from before the beginning of this universal creation shall carry us through our physical disintegration and death unto an immortal embodiment beyond this present life.

Secondly, these ashes on Ash Wednesday are not just randomly smeared on our foreheads without design. They are intentionally placed on us in the form of a cross. Therefore, with the symbol of the cross on our flesh, we mortals are connected with the eternal love of God expressed on Good Friday and the eternal life of God revealed on Easter Sunday. On Ash Wednesday we remember the promise that, just as we have come from cosmic stardust to occupy this mortal life, we shall also arise from the dust of death unto glorious immortality with Jesus our Savior and Lord! Yes, to dust we shall return, but THROUGH this dust and ashes we shall rise up to life everlasting in Jesus Christ!

Consequently, crosses of ashes on our foreheads are actually good news for us. Crosses of ashes point us toward the love and life of God, both at the beginning of all things and at the end of all things — from the Alpha to the Omega, from everlasting to everlasting. And crosses of ashes remind us that, because of this wonderful good news, we are called to self-reflect, repent, and to turn toward the Lord more fully in our daily lives.

The good news of Ash Wednesday centers on God’s love that is at the very heart of the entire cosmos itself, and that is most fully revealed through the cross and empty tomb of Jesus our Savior. So as an ashen cross is smeared upon your forehead, let this be a sacred occasion to return to the Lord your God, for he is gracious and merciful.

Blessed Lent to all of you!  Pastor Tim

ROW YOUR BOAT GENTLY DOWN THE STREAM

My dad died in 2003, then later my mom died in 2014, and so, at these very difficult times of great loss and grief, I found myself spending a lot of time and energy looking back. Naturally, this is a normal response when we experience the greatest losses in life, such as the death of a parent or a longtime spouse. Indeed, dwelling on the past with enormous amounts of mental and emotional energy like this is very much a part of the grieving process for up to a couple of years afterward.

Sadly, we can sometimes become stuck in the past — year after year, and even decade after decade — and this imprisonment in the past drains and robs us of being fully present right here and now. However, thanks be to God we can become unstuck by the good news of Jesus Christ our Savior and Lord! By God’s great mercy, we have been reborn into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. And this great hope lifts us up and rescues us from being hopelessly and endlessly stuck in the past and in our grief. As St. Paul the Apostle of Christ writes in his second letter to the Christians of the City of Corinth:

“Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For this slight momentary affliction is achieving for us an eternal glory beyond all measure. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.”

(Second Corinthians 4: 16-18)

Similarly, we can be tempted into the trap of being overly focused (to the point of obsession) on the future. We can exhaust ourselves with worrying about what the future might hold for us. Yet again, we can find ourselves drained and robbed of being fully present right here and now, except this time the culprit is our anxiety about the future. However, the cure for this is the same cure that saves us from being stuck in the past. The cure is the good news and eternal hope of Christ! For our Lord Jesus teaches us with his immortal words in chapter 6 of the Gospel of Matthew and in chapter 14 of the Gospel of John:

“Therefore I say to you, do not worry about your life… But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about its own things. Sufficient for today is its own trouble.”

(from Matthew 6: 25-34)

“In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also… I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you know me, you will know my Father also. From now on you do know him and have seen him.”

(from John 14: 2-7)

In other words, we should not obsess about what the future might hold for us, because we know The One who holds our future in his hands — our Heavenly Father. And because our Heavenly Father has provided his only begotten Son to bring us atonement, forgiveness and renewal of life, we have an all-surpassing future hope. Christ has died, yes, but Christ is now risen and we shall arise too. He is the Lord of all life and light and love, and this wonderful Lord is also the Lord of our everlasting future together.

Therefore, we need not fret over the impermanent nature of this temporary earthly existence that we all must journey through. It is a temporary condition during which we experience all sorts of tests and trials, but it is only momentary compared to the eternal glory that awaits us through Christ. For again as the Apostle Paul writes, “So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.”

The gospel of Christ empowers us to more gently row our boats through this life. Not futilely rowing backward against the flow of time, stuck in the past. Not frantically and exhaustingly rowing forward with great anxiety about the future. Rather, we are enabled to row gently down the stream — mentally and emotionally present in the here and now — by the power of the faith, hope and love of our Lord Jesus Christ.

During our Lenten Season and on into Eastertime, and indeed for the rest of our lives, may we continually learn to row our boats more gently down the stream of this life — “merrily, merrily,” as the old song goes — for we can do all things through Christ who strengthens us.

Blessed Season of Lent! Pastor Tim

LENTEN PLOWING & SEEDING

The good news of Jesus Christ is for the desperate. Those who recognize their sinful condition and their desperate need for God’s grace are the target audience of his gospel. And recognizing our basic spiritual desperation is the very thing that readies us to receive the all-surpassing consolation and salvation that can only come through the Living Word of God, Christ Jesus our Lord.

Due to the fall of humanity, allegorized in the Garden of Eden narrative, the fallen condition of the spiritual soil of the human soul is nothing but rocks, hardpan, weeds and thistles. Consequently, “good soil” within the human heart is not so much found as it is created. Just like it is with farming, soil suitable for planting must first be prepared by clearing, weeding and plowing.

Therefore, our hearts need repentance to be prepared to receive the seed of the gospel of Christ. When we sinners have the soil of our hearts broken up by the sharp plow blade of God’s biblical law, then our hearts are made repentantly soft and joyfully able to receive God’s gospel of grace. And the Season of Lent is a very useful time of year to get spiritually plowed up by God’s biblical law and prepared again to be planted anew with God’s saving grace in Christ.

Technically speaking, farmers do not plow to make the soil productive, but rather for the purpose of making the planted seed productive. That’s what God does with us, and that’s what he wants to do anew this Lenten Season. He wants to soften us up for an effective implantation of the grace of the gospel. Through the dying and rising of Jesus the Son of God, it is God’s righteousness alone that grants us this renewal, not our own righteousness. For indeed our human righteousness is so flawed and inadequate that God (who is totally good and holy and pure) regards it as something that is soiled and foul smelling at best, because our human righteousness is compromised by sinful pride and selfish gain. 

“All of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteousness is like filthy rags; we all wither like a leaf, and like the wind our sins sweep us away.”

Isaiah 64:6

Jesus comes to transform the curse of the soil of the human heart. He comes to give us an honest and contrite heart that appreciates its own sinful condition and desperately longs to be renewed by him through his saving gospel. For only a contrite heart can genuinely appreciate its need for the atonement and redemption that cannot be produced by our own merit, but must be first planted within us by our loving God.

“You do not delight in sacrifice, or I would bring it; you do not take pleasure in burnt offerings. The sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.”

Psalm 51:16-17

May the Lord of grace and truth make our fallen and sinful hearts to be soft and receptive, may he take hold of us and lead us with him through his sufferings of the Garden of Gethsemane and the Cross of Golgotha, and may he raise us up to new life in him.

“Thanks be to God, who always leads us as captives in Christ’s triumphal procession and uses us to spread everywhere the fragrance of knowing him. For we are the pleasing aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing.”

Second Corinthians 2:14-15

Good Lent & Blessed Holy Week!

Pastor Tim

JESUS, HELP US

We know that Muslims observe formal prayer five times a day, and we know that Christian monks and nuns observe formal prayer seven times a day, and we know that ancient Christian tradition calls upon every follower of Christ to pray the Lord’s Prayer three times each day (morning, midday and evening). However, the Word of God within the Holy Bible invites Christians to “pray without ceasing” every single day, 365 days a year:

“Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. Do not extinguish the Spirit.”

(First Thessalonians 5:16-19)

Of course, this is not strictly referring to formal prayer time where we take a few quiet meditative minutes in our day to center ourselves on Christ, but it’s mostly referring to the informal continual conversation with God that we practice throughout our daily lives: at home, at work, behind the wheel of a car, doing household chores, etc.

Certainly, we’re not expected to observe a time of formal prayer seven times each day as our monastic brothers and sisters in Christ observe. Monastic men and women of the Church do a great service to us by their formal prayer practices seven times a day, and by their deep spiritual contemplation, and by their devotional writings. However, for the vast majority of Christians this would be very impractical to try to observe the level of formal prayer that monastic Christians practice. Be that as it may, as I already mentioned, there is the ancient practice of praying the Lord’s Prayer three times a day. (For me, I try to pray the Lord’s Prayer at least once per day.) But there are other wonderful and brief pre-written prayers that we can utilize for the purpose of centering ourselves in God. Here are three examples of such simple formal prayers:

“Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end.”

(The Glory Be)

“Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.”

(The Jesus Prayer)

“Come Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful and kindle in us the fire of your love.”

(The Holy Spirit Prayer)

During the Season of Lent, we are given a special time of year to recognize our poverty of spirit and to seek the riches of God’s grace in Christ through more dedicated devotional reading, prayer and contemplation. To that end, we can use short formulaic prayers that are easily memorized (like The Glory Be, The Jesus Prayer, and The Holy Spirit Prayer) on a daily basis in order to de-clutter and center our hearts and minds, helping us to refocus and continue our informal daily conversation with God. So, these are like spiritual reset buttons that we can use.

Indeed, our annual Lenten observance gives us a special opportunity to recognize that our life in this world is ultimately dust and that God is our one and only True Rock. When we go through major transitions in life, it is okay to be sad. When we face depressing circumstances, it is okay to feel depressed. For we are dust and to dust we shall return (see Genesis 3:19). However, the good news of Jesus Christ is that we have a new birth into a living hope:

“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! By his great mercy he has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who are being protected by the power of God through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.”

(First Peter 1:3-5)

May we all have a good Lenten Season this year, daily praying with both formal and informal prayer practices to access the riches of God’s grace to help us through everything that life in this impermanent world places in front of us. So now I leave you with one more pre-written prayer from an old Catholic prayer booklet published by the Dehonian Monastic Order of the Sacred Heart of Jesus:

In every need let me come to You with humble trust, saying: Jesus, help me!

In all my doubts, perplexities and temptations: Jesus, help me!

In hours of loneliness, weariness and trials: Jesus, help me!

In the occasional failure of my hopes and plans, in disappointments, troubles and sorrows: Jesus, help me!

When others reject me, and Your grace alone can assist me: Jesus, help me!

When I throw myself on Your mercy and love as my Savior: Jesus, help me!

When my heart is cast down by frustration at seeing no good come from my efforts: Jesus, help me!

When I feel impatient, and my cross irritates me: Jesus, help me!

When I am ill, and my head and hands cannot work, and I am lonely: Jesus, help me!

Always, always, in spite of weaknesses, falls and shortcomings of every kind: My Lord Jesus Christ, help me and forever guide me. Amen.

Blessed Lent to all of you!  Pastor Tim

MISSIONARIES FOR CHRIST

In select theaters on March 17-18, 2020, Fathom Events is bringing to the big screen a new inspirational movie about the life and ministry of Saint Patrick, entitled “I Am Patrick.” It is a feature-length docudrama that peels back centuries of legend and myth to tell the story of the historical St. Patrick. Through re-enactments, expert interviews, and Patrick’s own writings, we can experience his remarkable journey of faith and transformation. It also stars John Rhys-Davies (best known for his role as Gimli in The Lord of the Rings saga) who plays St. Patrick in his elder years.  For us in our area, this movie will show on these two days at 6:30pm at AMC Burbank 16.

During the Season of Lent, the Christian Church has an annual observance on March 17th in commemoration of this great Fifth Century missionary bishop to Ireland. He was born at the end of the Fourth Century to a Roman family on the Isle of Great Britain. Patrick was raised in the Christian Faith, but at the age of sixteen he was abducted by Pagan Irish pirates who were raiding communities in and around Great Britain. Patrick was then enslaved by them, and during his captivity, he prayed often and his faith in the Lord Jesus Christ grew stronger. Patrick also learned the Irish Celtic language and customs. In addition, he learned about Druidism, which was the Pagan religion of the Celtic peoples of Western Europe. In fact, his slave master was a Druid high priest. After six years of captivity, he received guidance from an angel of God to flee his cruel master, and he escaped back to Britain.

As a result of this experience, Patrick’s heart was set toward serving God, so he went to France for his seminary education. After seminary, he served in pastoral ministry for approximately seventeen years until he was commissioned as a missionary bishop to Ireland. Patrick arrived in Ireland around 433 AD, and he shared the good news of Jesus Christ with the native people of Ireland for decades to follow. Because of his evangelistic ministry, Patrick is largely responsible for the establishment of Christianity in Ireland. Besides his famous use of the three-leafed shamrock to symbolize the Holy Trinity of God, he is also credited with driving the Druid priesthood (a.k.a. the “serpents”) from Ireland.

It is appropriate during Lent that we commemorate Saint Patrick, because he is a model of faithful and dedicated evangelism within a cultural context that’s largely unfriendly to the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Jesus said to them, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me, and to accomplish his work. Do you not say, ‘There are yet four months, then comes the harvest?’ I tell you, lift up your eyes, and see how the fields are already ripe for harvest.”

John 4: 34-35

Yes, according to Jesus, the fields of evangelism are already ripe for the harvest. However, these fields of evangelism in our society today often do not feel very ripe for harvesting. This is because we live in a time where many people who were raised in the Christian Faith are not living according to their baptismal covenant with God: “to live among God’s faithful people, to regularly hear the Word of God and share in the Lord’s Supper, to proclaim the good news of God in Christ Jesus through word and deed, to serve all people, following the example of Jesus, and to strive for justice and peace in all the earth.” And many of these are neglecting to nurture their children into the faith, hope and love of the Lord Jesus. Furthermore, as it was at the time of Saint Patrick in Ireland, our work of Christian evangelism is increasingly to those who at first find the gospel to be completely foreign to them.

Thanks be to God for the example of Saint Patrick, whose devotion and dedication to God gives us inspiration to do the work of evangelism within our daily lives. May we continue to share the good news of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ with others, even though it might not initially be received too well, or even if our evangelical outreach in the name of Christ is completely rejected.

Let us remember Jesus’ words of promise, saying, “See how the fields are already ripe for harvest.” And, when sharing the good news and joy of our Lord with others, let us continually pray for direction with the words of the great missionary bishop, Saint Patrick, who wrote: “May the strength of God pilot me, the power of God uphold me, the wisdom of God guide me.”

Good Lent & Blessed Saint Patrick’s Day! Pastor Tim