We could look at this week’s passage from the Gospel of John only from the perspective of the blind man. 
We could ponder what it means to be blind, the difficulty of getting through the day, what it means to be cut off from family and friends, etc., facing not only the struggle to cope, but also with the guilt that overwhelms us when people try to convince us that we must have sinned, thus causing our blindness.
Or the anger, when we’re told that it was something our parents did wrong – they must have sinned, too! 
We could follow the blind man on his journey - from being a sinner in the eyes of the world, to becoming a believer in Jesus - the Messiah. 
 
But another perspective we could take, is that of the religious leaders, the guardians of tradition, the pillars of the community, who supposedly stood between God and the people, and we might ask,
"Aren’t these people actually more handicapped by blindness than the man who was healed?"
For this is a story of two kinds of blindness. 
One is physical – which is admittedly a tragedy - but one that can be dealt with through courage, determination, and education – calling for our support through research, compassion, and consideration. 
The other is spiritual - which can be overcome through the extravagant grace of God in our Lord Jesus.
If we’re honest, for most of us, this is the one we must deal with in our Christian lives.
 
Lent was, and remains to this day, a time in which all Christians are called to reorient themselves from the distractions of sin, apathy and mundaneness and return to the life-giving will of God.
John calls the faithful to do the same thing and it stands as a powerful and provocative witness to the fact that in Jesus Christ, God has revealed himself to the world.

John’s gospel begins by him calling Jesus, simply, but profoundly, “the Word.”
In his first chapter, John employs powerful theological phrases in reference to Jesus, calling him the “Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world!”
John describes Jesus, not simply as a miracle worker or faith healer, but rather as a worker of signs, each pointing beyond itself to a larger truth.

Here in Chapter 9, Jesus works a sign by healing a man who had been blind from birth.
As word of what Jesus did begins to spread, the Pharisees puff out their chests, saying,
“If Jesus really was from God, he would have known that the law prohibits such actions on the Sabbath.”
But by questioning the legality of what Jesus did, the Pharisees totally miss the point.
They focus on the action itself, and not the larger truth that the action reveals.
The blind man receiving sight isn’t the point of the story, but rather it focuses us on the blind man’s relationship with Jesus – and that teaches us more about our own relationship with the Lord.
 
The disciples ask Jesus, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man, or his parents, that he was born blind?”
They assumed, as most people did in those days, that suffering was the result of sinfulness.
We may also find ourselves thinking, not of physical blindness, but of other scourges that plague us.
We watch helplessly as the news reports yet another terrorist attack, or the effects of war.
We also weep as we hear of lives cut short by bullying, from both individuals and dictatorships.
We feel inexplicable anger at the grim prognosis of a young mother stricken with cancer.
“What have they done to deserve this?” we wonder. “Is God punishing us?”
Suddenly, we realize that the disciples’ question is familiar, because it’s one we, ourselves, ask of God.
And yet the answer Jesus gives to the disciples – to us – is: “Neither this man, nor his parents sinned.”
 
Jesus reminds us that the axiom is true, indeed: Sometimes bad things happen to good people.
But Jesus goes beyond platitudes: “He was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him.”
Jesus shows the disciples, and us, that even in the midst of things we can’t understand, God is at work.
And to prove it, Jesus works a sign - he gives the man sight, yes, but he also gives him something greater. We see that the man couldn’t quite put into words what had happened to him.
He didn’t know exactly why it had happened, but he knew the Saviour’s voice!
So, when Jesus says to him, “Go, wash,” he does just that.
He hears the Saviour’s voice, he follows it, and at long last, he sees Jesus, crying out, “Lord, I believe!” as he falls down and worships at the feet of Jesus.
 
At the end of the story, some of the Pharisees do begin to see the point Jesus is making.
They question whether they can see at all, when they ask Jesus "Surely we’re not blind, are we?"
And the response from Jesus is sharp and precise:
"If you were blind, you would not have sin. But now that you say, 'We see,' your sin remains."
 
We should be careful, then, whenever we say, "We see."
We should never underestimate the marvellous presence of God, for God will burst the boundaries and walls of our personal agendas with a new light – Jesus - the Light of the World, who shines into our lives.
Jesus does so by focusing not on the reasons for illness, but by focusing on human need.
There are people around us whose needs are so familiar to us, that we now ignore them.
They were born blind, we say, and that is that.
Jesus, however, refuses to walk past them, just as Jesus refuses to walk past each one of us.
Jesus wants to touch each one of us with sight, whether we’re blind or sighted, Pharisee or disciple, we’re all an opportunity for Jesus to reveal light in utter and elegant simplicity.
Let Jesus touch our eyes today; and we will see the Light of the World.
 
Who among us has not experienced spiritual blindness in one form or another?
When we put ourselves before others, when we hold grudges and refuse to forgive others, when we do what’s easy instead of what’s right, we’re blind.
 
Blindness affects us not only as individuals, but as communities as well.
Economic, social and political systems often turn a blind eye to the poor, the outcast and the marginalised in every corner of the world.
 
Who among us has not experienced suffering at one point or another?
Depression, anxiety, abuse, neglect, broken relationships, illness, lost jobs, fear – the list goes on.
Our communities are plagued with natural disasters, terrorism and national tragedies – no-one’s immune.
 
Of course, there are those who’ll attempt to lull us into believing that faith not only brings an end to suffering and blindness, but also makes our hurts and pains disappear - the truth is that this simply isn’t so.
Even after the blind man received his sight, he was still faced with the rejection of his friends and family.
Suffering is painful and grief is awful – even horrifying, but it’s an inescapable part of our humanity.
 
The powerful and life-giving truth of the gospel is that our suffering and grief will not have the last word. As our souls and bodies desperately cry out for relief, we hear the faint yet clear voice of the risen Christ calling us; reminding us that, through his time on the cross, death and its trappings were swallowed up.
 
The final word rests, not with suffering and blindness, but with life and peace.
Then we hear the most sublime words imaginable, we hear Jesus tell us to “Go, wash.”
And, as the cool and refreshing waters of God’s forgiveness wash over us, our eyes and our hearts are opened to behold the living Christ, standing as the chains of death and hell lay broken at his feet and our voices can cry out at last, “Lord! I believe!”

​Pastor Rick

Even in a time when many people don't know much about the Bible, there's a verse that a lot of people know by heart - and don't even have to recite it - just using the reference will do: "John 3:16" 
It suggests the heart of the Christian message, summarizing what God did in, and through, Jesus. 
"For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life" - it's the Gospel, or Good News, in a nutshell.
Today, on this Second Sunday of Lent, we’ll go deeper into this familiar passage from John. 
To do that, we have to go on a journey into the distant past - all the way back to the book of Numbers. 
The people are in the Sinai desert, less-than-whole-heartedly following Moses on a circuitous trek, out of slavery, toward the land that God has promised to them. 
Moses' rag-tag band of pilgrims have begun to "murmur" - complaining about the hard life of the desert.
This strange, God-given diet of manna and quail, and the uncertainty of their serpentine route.
Serpentine in more ways than one, for here, in the ninth chapter of Numbers, somewhere out in this seemingly God-forsaken desert, there’s a plague of poisonous snakes and people were beginning to die. 
So they went to Moses, suspecting that the snakes were some kind of divine retribution for all their complaining, and asked Moses to intercede for them with God, which he did.
In response, God tells Moses to fashion a serpent of bronze, put it on a pole, telling him that if any of the people are bitten by a poisonous snake, they should gaze at the bronze serpent and they will be healed. 
Interesting, isn't it?  Look at a snake and be healed of snakebite. 
And God’s suggestion actually worked, because those who had been bitten, then gazed at the bronze serpent that Moses had made, were healed - it was a miracle. Was that the end of the story?  Maybe not.

In the book of 2 Kings, Chapter 18, we read that for 500 years after Moses, we haven't heard another word about this bronze serpent. 
Now the people have been settled in for some time in the Promised Land, where they had decided they needed to have kings - like other nations. 

Many of those kings were disappointing and corrupt, but one king came along who was different. 
His name was Hezekiah, and he cleaned things up in the land, including “cutting down the sacred pole." 
In effect, what he did was destroy the pagan worship places, which had cropped up around the land. 
And then we read this:  "He broke in pieces the bronze serpent that Moses had made, for until those days the people of Israel had made offerings to it - they called it Nehushtan."

Five hundred years after Moses had made the bronze serpent as a means of healing the people, they still had it - and it had become an idol - what had been a means to an end, had become an end in itself! 
Instead of pointing toward the God who had ordered it made, it pointed toward itself - and the people worshiped the serpent, instead of the God to whom it was supposed to point, and they’d even named it! 
I wonder what the people's reaction was, when King Hezekiah smashed that five-hundred-year-old bronze serpent - after all, it was made by Moses himself, a precious antique, a part of the nation's history. 
The Old Testament passages about the bronze serpent illustrates a necessary point. 
What had been helpful and healing in one era had become an idol in another. 
I can't help but wonder: how many things in the life of our churches used to be helpful and healing but have outlived their usefulness and how many old traditions have we turned into idols? 
There’s much discussion these days about the church's failure to attract and engage young adults. 
The latest Bureau of Statistics census shows that the most rapid growth in religious following is among the "Nones" - that is, those who answer the question of religious affiliation as "None." 
We can't help but wonder if those who try our churches find us gathered around various prized bronze serpents - that we should have smashed long ago. 
I have been involved in churches for most of my life and I must confess that I’ve been exposed to many such serpents, but we must challenge ourselves to ask which among these objects are no longer helpful. 
What means to an end have we turned into ends in themselves? 

Good King Hezekiah smashed the bronze serpent, in spite of what I'm sure were numerous complaints from the Hebrew Historical Architectural Review Board and he proved to be an example of reform.
So, are we done with our serpentine ancestry? 
Have we seen the last of the bronze serpent? 
Not quite. 
In today’s Gospel reading, we find Jesus, the Messiah, visited by Nicodemus, under the light of a candle. 
Nicodemus, a respected member of the Sanhedrin, the religious leaders of Jerusalem, comes to Jesus under cover of night to quiz Jesus on a few theological points.
I’m sure Nicodemus was a genuine seeker, who had urgent and searching questions of the master rabbi.
So now we hear Nicodemus, his voice in whispered tones: "Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God; for no one can do these signs that you do, apart from the presence of God." 
"You must be born from above," Jesus says; but Nicodemus misunderstands him. 
The Hebrew words can be taken another way, Nicodemus hears, "You must be born again." 
“What”, he asks, “you mean I have to go back into my mother's womb and be born all over again?” 
“No”, says Jesus, “you need to be born on two levels - water and spirit - you must be born from above!”
Jesus was trying to lift the eyes of this religious leader to take in higher things, so that he might begin to see his life from a spiritual perspective. 
Jesus tells Nicodemus that he "must be born of water and spirit." 
Lift up your eyes, Nicodemus!  "If I’ve told you about earthly things and you don’t believe, how can you believe if I tell you about heavenly things?" 

So here it comes. 
You know the words of John 3:16, "God so loved the world." 
But how well do you know John 3:13-15, the verses that come just before it? 
It says:  "No one has ascended into heaven except the one who descended from heaven, the Son of Man (i.e. Jesus).  And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him will have eternal life." 
Here it is!  The bronze serpent has come back in the New Testament, in today’s gospel reading! 
That old bronze serpent - made by Moses and smashed by King Hezekiah - has come back at the end of this serpentine story. 
Jesus is not saying that a serpent on a pole can heal you; he’s saying that, just as the serpent was lifted up in the wilderness to heal, so he, Jesus Christ, the Son of Man, must be lifted up on a cross to save us. 
You must lift up your eyes, Nicodemus!  You must be born from above. 
You must discover the incredible world of the Spirit.  And if nothing else will lift up your eyes and your heart, then the sight of me will lift them up.
And then this great, final word in verse 17: "Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him."
Maybe you've been in church all your life. 
Maybe you're a census ticking "None", with no affiliation. 
Maybe you're a seeker like Nicodemus, checking Jesus out under the cover of night. 
Whoever you are, remember this: he didn’t come to condemn you, but to save you and give you life. 
In Jesus we find new life.

So lift up your eyes. 
Lift up your hearts. 

The story has come to this:  "For God so loved the world"
and because of that, we can live new lives in Christ.      

Pastor Rick

It must have been very difficult for Jesus to accept the challenge of going into the wilderness and fasting for forty days and nights, but he was convinced that the way to true life, for him, was to live within those limits.  
After he spent time pondering who he was being called to be, and how he would live out that call, he found himself under temptation - tempted to use his gifts just for himself - to turn stones into bread to eat.
But he knew his gifts were given so that he could be a blessing to others, and that God would provide for him. 
He was tempted to test God and to deny his identity as Son of God by worshipping the devil, but Jesus knew that his real life was to be found as a child of God, living within the limits of what God had called him to be and to do.
I’m suggesting to you that the worst temptation for a believer today may be the same one which Jesus faced when he spent his forty days in the wilderness.
Did I say the one (1) temptation?
Yes, I certainly did, however the alert among you will remind me that Jesus endured not one temptation, but three:
To turn stones into bread, to leap from the tower of the temple and to worship the devil and rule the world.
You’re right in that those three things are mentioned in today’s Gospel story about our Lord’s temptation, but what I’m suggesting to you is that those three things are all about just one temptation.
 
However, before I expand on my suggestion, I’ll put it to you that if the temptations of Jesus revolve around turning stones into bread, jumping from a tower and ruling the world, then his temptations are rather exotic compared with mine; and, I suspect, compared with yours.
 
For example: a police officer, faced with the lure of a large bribe, wouldn’t relate to any of Jesus’ temptations.
Nor would a nurse, who was being pressured to cover up some medical malpractice, upon which they had stumbled. Nor would the Christian, who was tempted to deny their faith in order to be popular with work mates.
I’ve never been asked to turn stones into bread, jump from a temple, nor bow down to the devil and rule the world.
Our temptations are more of a common, home-grown variety.
 
So, let’s look at what happened to Jesus in the wilderness.
The clue, I believe, is in that little word “if” which occurs in the first two episodes.
The ‘if’ calls Jesus’ faith in to question; his belief that he is the Son of God.
 
The Tempter came and said to him: If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.
The barb of the temptation is in the “if”.
This taunt lays siege to the very basis of Christ’s faith in his status as the Son of God. Doubt is the issue.
Remember that this temptation followed directly on from John’s baptism of Jesus, when the Spirit rested on Jesus and the heavenly voice said: This is my dearest Son, with whom I am very pleased. Was that voice real?
Was his faith real? Jesus is now being tempted to prove his faith, instead of simply trusting God.
 
Then the devil took him to the holy city, and placed him on the pinnacle of the temple, saying to him: If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down, for it is written ‘He will command his angels concerning you.... so that you will not dash your foot against the stone’. Once more the crux of the temptation is hidden in the insidious little “if”.
If you really are the Son of God, jump off. Prove yourself as the Son of God - perform a mighty miracle.
Again, the temptation strikes at the faith of Jesus; calls it into doubt - are you really the Child of God?
 
The next is more complex, but I see it as hinging on the same point. Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain, and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendour; and he said to him: ‘All these things I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me.’
The devil argues: Wouldn’t it be wonderful if you, Jesus, could rule the whole world.  Face it Jesus, you’re not God’s child, but mine. Your faith is unreal.
 
There’s one temptation at the core of each episode and it’s one of a faith crisis.
Jesus is tempted to doubt his status as God’s true child.
 
Today we’re tempted by those who tell us that we can have anything we want, be anyone we want to be, live life without limits and that, they say, is the way to real life.  
Well, it wasn’t in the time of Jesus, and it isn’t now.  
No one has ever become an athlete, like the current Winter Olympians, without the discipline of training;
no one becomes good at a profession without the discipline of study and experience.  
No one has a happy marriage and family life without accepting the constraints of a commitment to each other.
 
Does this situation sound familiar to you?
A nagging inner voice addresses you personally: “If you really are a Christian, why can’t you feed all the hungry people of the world, do more for the street kids, or do much more to help the alcoholics and drug addicts?
If you truly are a Christian, you should be achieving greater things than you are.”
 
Maybe it’s another variation on the theme “If you really are a child of God, as the Bible says, why haven’t you, and your fellow children of God, done more to bring justice and peace to the world, or peace to the divided churches?
If you truly are God’s child, there should be much more reconciliation around.
 
In each of these cases we’re taunted in a way which hits at our faith, the core of our religion.
It strikes at our status as those who follow Christ Jesus. 
The Tempter says: As a Christian, as a saved person, as a child of God - prove your status.
 The moment we fall for this temptation, we’re in big trouble.
If we begin to doubt our God-given status, the devil can walk us into a quagmire of guilt, frustration, and finally into the depths of faithless despair.
 
Our Christian status is a gift from God, not something we need to prove, or could ever earn. Jesus knew himself as God’s son by the word of God, not by his own works.
In his desert temptation, again and again he turns to the Scriptures in answer to the devil. In order to know himself as God’s child, he doesn’t have to turn stones into bread, or perform dramatic signs like jumping from the temple tower, or by ruling the world - No - he just has to have faith, to trust the God whom he calls Father.
 
As Paul put it: By God’s grace you are saved, through faith. This faith is not your work but it is a gift from God.
God loves us in Christ Jesus and names us his children.
That’s all that ultimately matters, God’s love, outpoured to the uttermost on the Cross, not our smidgin of love and good works, not our performance, that counts – it’s God’s gift.
 
Jesus tells us that God’s plan for us is that we might have life - and have it more abundantly.
But that life only comes when we accept the limits God gives to us.  
 
So maybe that’s what Lent is all about – setting some limits, being more open to the life God has for us.
Instead of just patting ourselves on the back because we’ve given up chocolate, coffee, or some other favourite thing, for the 40 days of Lent, why don’t we think about Lent as a time of preparation for a more difficult tomorrow?
After all, that’s what Jesus was doing, as he set his sights on Jerusalem and the passion that He was about to endure.
 
Because of his sacrifice, we don’t have to endure the same agony.
But we should be preparing ourselves to resist the temptations.
By prayer, reading of the Bible and earnest discussions with other Christians, in an attempt to discover what its words mean for us in our temptations today.
 
Yes, it’s tempting to just kick back and relax, but do you think that’s what God would want you to do?
 
Instead of just switching our brains off and watching television this afternoon, maybe we should take the time to read through the Bible readings set down for this week and ask God to enlighten us as to how their messages are relevant in today’s hustle and bustle.
 
Then focus less on the concept of giving things up during Lent and more on what we can do with the extra time and/or money we now have.

​Pastor Rick

This story from the Gospel of Matthew, almost defies interpretation - although that hasn’t stopped legions of interpreters from trying over the past two millennia. 
It’s the story of a quite mystical encounter, not only between God and his beloved Son, but also between those at the centre of the story (Jesus, Moses and Elijah) and those who watch (the disciples Peter, James and John). 
Many of us are left labouring under the illusion that it’s our job to figure out what the story actually means.
But is it just that the story itself is a suitcase for conveying the meaning that’s inside of it. 
By discerning the content of the story, we don’t have to go rummaging around every time it comes up. 
In this case, the most commonly decoded message is that Moses represents the Law, Elijah stands for the Prophets, and Jesus, of course, is the Messiah. 
By singling Jesus out as "my Son, the Beloved," God sets the gospel above the law and the prophets. 
Listen to him, says the voice from the cloud. 
 
But there appear to be two auxiliary meanings in the passage as well - one about how it’s better to keep your mouth shut in the presence of the holy one, than blurt things out like Peter does - and another about how the purpose of such an experience is to strengthen us for the climb back down into the valley, where our real work is to be done.  
 
Those are exactly the meanings that Jesus, Matthew, or God meant for us to get from the story; but it's important to note that the passage itself, doesn’t say any of those things. 
Instead, it describes something so far beyond ordinary human experience, that most of us are perfectly content to watch it from afar. 
 
It starts with a long climb up to the top of a windy mountain, in the fading light of day, looking for a good place to pray - no talking amongst them. 
We sit down with them and we’re here to pray, so we get on with it, praying until we’re weighed down with sleep. 
We pray until it’s dark, although we see some light through our eyelids - where light shouldn’t be.  
We don't really want to open our eyes to see where the light’s coming from, and we aren't even sure if we should - but then we decide to take a peek.
And there he is: someone we thought we knew well, standing there - pulsing with light, leaking light everywhere. 
His face like a flame and his clothes dazzling white. 
Then, as if that weren't enough, two other people are there with him, all of them standing in that same bright light. 
Who are they?   No, it can't be.   Moses?   Elijah?  Are they dead men who’ve come back to life? 
No, it’s God's own glory, lighting up the night…..  and now they're leaving. 
Peter's babbling on about something - tents, he's saying, we need tents.  
Now there's a cloud coming in fast, and its way more than just a weather event - it’s a terrifying cloud – so alive. 
Cutting Peter off, covering everything up - smells like a lightning strike - and we can't see a thing.
Then a voice from the cloud lifts the hairs on the back of our necks. 
Fear - so fast and primitive, that we're bristling like a dog. 
What's the voice saying?  Not "listen to me" but "listen to him." 
Who is him?    Well, it’s the Son, the Beloved One, Jesus. 
But listen to what?   He's not saying anything.   He's just shining. 
Or at least he was.   But now he's not.   Now it's over.   What happens now?
 
If anything, even remotely that strange, has ever happened to you, then you’ll know why Peter, James and John were relieved when Jesus told them to keep what had happened to themselves. 
Supernatural light, famous people coming back from the dead, God talking from inside a cloud. 
Things like these may happen in Bible stories, but try relating a personal experience like this to others and they’re likely to refer you to a good psychiatrist. 
 
Once we emerge from the cloud, we’re supposed to be surer than ever about what we believe. 
We’re supposed to know who's who, what's what, where we’re going in our lives and why. 
We’re supposed to have answers to all the important questions, and when we read the bible, we’re supposed to know exactly what it means. 


But what if the point is not to decode the cloud, but to enter into it? 
What if the whole Bible is less a book of certainties, than it is a book of encounters, in which a staggeringly long parade of people run into God, and are never the same again? 
I mean, what situation don't people run into in the Bible? 
Not just terrifying clouds and hair-raising voices, but also crazy relatives, persistent infertility, armed enemies, pillars of salt and deep depression, along with life-saving strangers, miraculous children, food in the wilderness, and move.
 
Whether such biblical encounters are called "good" or "bad," they have a way of breaking biblical people open, of rearranging what they think they’re sure of, so that there’s room for more divine movement in their lives. 
Sometimes, the movement involves traveling from one place to another. 
Sometimes, it means changing their perspective on what’s true and why. 


Certainties can become casualties in these encounters, or at least those certainties that involve clinging to static notions of who's who and what's what, where you are going in your life and why. 
Those things can shift pretty dramatically inside the cloud of unknowing, where faith has more to do with staying fully present to what is happening right in front of us, than with being certain of what it all means. 
The meeting - that's the important thing.
The Bible calls it "God's glory" - the shining cloud that is the sure sign of God's presence. 
 
In the Book of Exodus, when Moses climbed Mt. Sinai to fetch the tablets of the law, the whole top of the mountain stayed covered by a divine cloud cover for six whole days. 
In 1 Kings, when Solomon dedicated the Temple in Jerusalem, a dense cloud filled up that huge place so that the priests could not even see what they were supposed to be doing.  
When Ezekiel had his vision of the four living creatures, he saw them in the middle of "a great cloud with brightness around it and fire flashing forth continually."
Whether, or not, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. saw a dazzling cloud before he wrote his famous “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop” speech, I’m not sure.
He spoke those words just one day before he was assassinated in 1968.
In the speech, he paraphrases the words of the bible, saying that he has seen the Promised Land.
He also alludes to the fact that he may soon be killed, but that, with God by his side, he has nothing to fear.
Even Jesus only seems to have had two experiences like this – once at his baptism, when the cloud and the dove alighted on him, giving him encouragement and strength as he began his ministry, and in this story - on the mountain - to help him turn his face towards Jerusalem and the fate that he knew waited for him there, encouraged by two of the greats of Israel - Moses and Elijah.
 
I wish I could say that we’ll have this sort of experience every time we come to worship before God, but I’m fairly sure that we won’t.
God grants us this sort of experience rarely, and, even then, only to prepare us for especially difficult times ahead. 
We can’t stay on the mountaintop forever – we have to go down into the valleys to do his work.
What we do have, is the chance to follow what the voice from the heaven speaks to disciples: “Listen to him.”
Listen to Jesus, hearing his words of truth and grace and thinking about how we can follow them today.  


Lent, which begins this coming week on Ash Wednesday, calls us to rediscover our spirituality.
To be, to quit our frantic babbling and just pay attention.
To consider who we are, even apart from whose we are, in our baptism.
 
We are God's precious children, forgiven, loved, held, gifted and called - sent to do God's work in the world.
If we don't get the "being" part, then the “doing” will only be chaotic, frustrated attempts at self-justification, or else grounded in fear and devoid of any joy.
If all that we’re doing seems mad and pointless, we need to re-learn the mystery and enter a quiet place of awe.
 
There’ll be more than ample opportunity to live out our call to discipleship, to taking up our own cross.
But, in order to be able to do that, at least for now, it’s ok to just sit there quietly and let it all flow over us!           

​Pastor Rick