February 2008

Monthly Archive

February 26, 2008

The Impatience of Our Lives

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We confess to you, Lord, all our past unfaithfulness: the pride, hypocrisy, and impatience of our lives, We confess to you, Lord.

- From the “Litany of Penitence” on Ash Wednesday,
The Book of Common Prayer

The trifecta of sins plaguing humanity from ancient times to modern. Pride, the sin that caused the fall of our race. Pride says, “I know better than God,” and shows our true ignorance. Hypocrisy, the sin of the religious, “Woe to you pharisees,” and “Woe to us pharisees.” Impatience, the best performance enhancer of sin that has ever existed. Adam and Eve could have become more like God day by day in walking with him, but were impatient and desired it now. The Pharisees could have attained true religion, but found it more convenient to crucify the Christ. Together with us today: pride, hypocrisy and impatience. They attack us, challenging our faith. How do we fight this combination? Self-examination in humility, true confession to ourselves and others, and waiting on the Lord. Lent is painful, it calls us to these duties, growing our humility, honesty and patience.

 

February 25, 2008

Incandescent Light

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I thought I was the only one who bemoaned our transition from the incandescent light to the unfeeling light of the compact fluorescent bulb (CFL). Dan Neil at the LA Times, one of my favorite columnists, wrote a story that could have come directly from my heart. It’s a modern coming of age story about the light bulb and a man learning to say good bye. I recommend this to you as heart-felt and “enlightening.”

 

February 23, 2008

Deaf To Your Call

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We have been deaf to your call to serve, as Christ served us. We have not been true to the mind of Christ. We have grieved your Holy Spirit.
Have mercy on us, Lord.

- From the “Litany of Penitence” on Ash Wednesday,
The Book of Common Prayer
The Spirit’s purpose is to point us to the work of Christ. Before knowing Christ, seeking to know God, the Spirit points us in the direction of the cross of Christ. After finding Christ, seeking to please God, the Spirit points us to our cross fashioned after Christ’s. The Spirit desires desperately that we connect with Christ and partner with his work. When we are deaf to the Spirit’s call, his call to serve, we tell him that we are no longer interested in the work of Christ. That rejection grieves him indeed - Lord please have mercy on us!
 

February 20, 2008

We Have Not Loved

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We have not loved you with our whole heart, and mind, and
strength.
We have not loved our neighbors as ourselves.
We have not forgiven others, as we have been forgiven.
Have mercy on us, Lord.

- From the “Litany of Penitence” on Ash Wednesday,
The Book of Common Prayer

What a stark wake up call this public confession is! I for one am too often lulled into a false sense of security because I mostly love God and I love more people than I dislike. I’m a pretty good person and hold generally positive feelings towards most people - that makes me a good Christian right? Here we see the standard of Christ held up against our lives and we see how far we really are from the mark. May we make our standard of love Christ, loving people as ourselves with our whole heart, whole mind, and our whole strength. May we forgive others as we have been forgiven by God - and may his perfect love and grace continue to fill in the gaps.
 

February 11, 2008

What We Have Done And Left Undone

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“Most holy and merciful Father:
We confess to you and to one another,
and to the whole communion of saints
in heaven and on earth,
that we have sinned by our own fault
in thought, word, and deed;
by what we have done, and by what we have left undone.”

- From the “Litany of Penitence” on Ash Wednesday,
The Book of Common Prayer
Rallies across America and alter calls across Evangelica focus on our private struggles with sin. These sins we wrestle with are sins we have committed, wrongs done to others, to ourselves, to our sense of righteousness, to God. People go forward, “repent,” and walk out the door on with the same business. Part of the problem, identified in this prayer, is that we fail to confess our sins to one another. James 5:16, “Therefore confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another, so that you may be healed.” What clearer call is there to sincere repentance that is shared in our community of faith?
But there is a greater wrong with our understanding of sin as shown in this litany. We believe that sin is something we do, something we commit. These sins of commission are only half of the problem. James 4:17 teaches us about the equally deadly sin of omission. Here James writes, “Anyone, then, who knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, commits sin.”
Let us pause today in repentance, personally and corporately. Confessing to our merciful God all that “we have sinned by our own fault in thought, word, and deed.” Let us be about God’s business of righteousness, omitting no act of grace that comes our way. Let us in humility seek God’s grace for our selves and our churches as we imperfectly follow the footsteps of Christ to the cross.
 

February 6, 2008

Ash Wednesday

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Many of you evangelicals are probably unaware that today is Ash Wednesday unless you have a desk calendar with the holidays pre-printed on it. Ash Wednesday is a beautiful tradition celebrated by many of the more liturgical churches and has a message we as evangelicals could stand to hear. Today marks the beginning of Lent, a season of preparing yourself for Christ. One could argue that we should do this everyday and we should, but it is not harmful for us to pause for a season of repentance and meditation. That is why Lent is observed starting with Ash Wednesday. Throughout this season I will be taking the responsive reading and prayer from this service and expounding upon it until Easter. The liturgy of this day is beautiful, and I have taken the liberty of copying it from the Book of Common Prayer.

“Dear People of God: The first Christians observed with great devotion the days of our Lord’s passion and resurrection, and it became the custom of the Church to prepare for them by a season of penitence and fasting. This is season of Lent provided a time in which converts to the faith were prepared for Holy Baptism. It was also a time when those who, because of notorious sins, had been separated from the body of the faithful were reconciled by penitence and forgiveness, and restored to the fellowship of the Church. Thereby, the whole congregation was put in mind of the message of pardon and absolution set forth in the Gospel of our Savior, and of the need which all Christians continually have to renew their repentance and faith.

I invite you, therefore, in the name of the Church, to the observance of a holy Lent, by self-examination and repentance; by prayer, fasting, and self-denial; and by reading and editating on God’s holy Word. And, to make a right beginning of repentance, and as a mark of our mortal nature, let us now kneel before the Lord, our maker and redeemer.”

 

February 1, 2008

Short Prayers

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I have been greatly affected by my reading of Henri Nouwen’s book, The Way of the Heart. I’ve been taking a short excerpt from each chapter daily and have attempted to truly digest the truth that Nouwen writes. This morning as I read Nouwen he quoted St. John Climacus who lived in the Seventh century, Climacus offers this advice to those who pray, “When you pray, do not try to express yourself in fancy words, for often it is the simple, repetitious phrases of a little child that our Father in heaven finds most irresistible. Do not strive for verbosity lest your mind be distracted from devotion by a search for words. One phrase on the lips of the tax collector was enough to win God’s mercy; one humble request made with faith was enough to save the good thief. Wordiness in prayer often subjects the mind to fantasy and dissipation; single words by their very nature tend to concentrate the mind.” In light of this, I offer a prayer for us today, “Christ be found by those of us who seek you.”