“The spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me,
because the LORD has anointed me;
he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed,
to bind up the broken-hearted,
to proclaim liberty to the captives,
and release to the prisoners;
to proclaim the year of the LORD 's favour.
(Isaiah 61:1&2a, NRSV)
So much light and hope shine through Jesus' reading of this passage at the beginning of the Gospel of Luke. The selflessness of his ministry is always something challenging for me to reflect upon. We Oles are often far removed from the idea of sacrifice in our comfortable world on our insulated hill. Lent is one of our best opportunities to practice selflessness and love. With attentiveness to the needs of others we can learn how to make a lifestyle of “offering our time, ourselves, and our possessions.” Not one of the three, but all. This is a heavy charge that the Lutheran liturgy carries, and that the life of Christ exemplifies.
Hopefully during this season, as we consider the great price that Jesus paid, we also remember our challenge to “let the same mind be in [us] that was in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 2:5). Hopefully, we remember to leave our busy-ness and frantic schedules at the door so we can truly see one another and God. Hopefully, we can be still, see the Cross where Jesus soon is going, and remember what Love does.
Wonderful Creator,
During this time of sacrificial love, we humbly ask you to remind us that we are but stewards of all the gifts with which you have entrusted us. Help us remember that it is our responsibility to live lives worthy of our calling, to reach for the perfect measure of Christ. Help us bring your gifts and your gospel to all of your Creation, knowing that when one of your children cries, all our hearts must break, and when one rejoices, all must sing and dance. We pray boldly in the name of Jesus,
So be it.
Amen.
“Listen, you that are deaf; and you that are blind, look up and see!”
~Isaiah 42:18~
Lent makes me fearful sometimes- fearful and confused. God made flesh preparing to die is beyond my ability to accept. Love that gives so deeply of itself is beyond what my heart can hold. I feel deaf and blind to what is being shown to me.
In fact, the metaphor of spiritual sight in scripture touches a deep experience in my life. I have been completely blind in my left eye for as long as I can remember. Imagining the miraculous restorations of sight in the gospel narratives moves me to imagine what my sight would be if it could be restored. I can't explain what it is like to see the world through one eye anymore than someone with full sight can explain how she sees the world through her two eyes. Imagine for a moment how you might explain how your physical vision shapes the world that you see.
I imagine that spiritual sight is the same. The blindness God calls us out of with the beautiful folly of the cross awakens us to a new way of seeing, a way we may as yet not understand and that we cannot describe. But in the few and scattered moments that we are strong enough to see the world as God does, we know that it is worth fighting out of blindness and complacency and into glorious sight. That is Lent to me- looking into my blindness to find sight.
Lord, grant us new sight as we fumble through the darkness of our
brokenness and towards the light of your Christ this day and always. Amen.
“ Seek the Lord and his strength; seek his presence continually. Remember the wonderful works he has done.”
~Psalm 105: 4-5a~
When I read the writings of the psalmist I am struck by the profundity of the human struggle towards God- that we are on a journey whose destination is far distant. To me Lent is for remembering how very far we are from our destination. Here the psalmist is reminding us to seek the Lord and remember his work- suggesting that God and God's works are still hidden and often forgotten.
I'm not sure about you, but I feel as if I operate on the assumption that I have some idea of where to find God and what God might be up to most of the time. But I think that assumption is based on my desire to have already arrived at a destination and not to continue to struggle through the journey.
We are often preoccupied with destinations. But, when it comes right down to it, all we have is this moment and this place where we are right now. Heaven is only with us inasmuch as we are building it wherever we are, and the realities that lie beyond this life are only as real as this moment of the journey, even if it is a painful one. Jesus expresses anguish in his journey to the Cross because it is a painful journey. I believe that his confidence in the coming reunion with God is a source of strength through the darkest nights, but the nights are still dark.
Like Jesus we struggle towards the light of reunion with our Creator, and try to remember God's greatness and bear it into the dark corners of our own lives and the lives of others. And we must seek the strength of Christ to persevere through the parts of the journey that make us want to retreat into visions of missions already accomplished. There is much work yet to be done.