Where to Meet God

 

 In our Ash Wednesday worship service (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9M7dgGWufo0), I invited our church to practice silence and solitude as spiritual disciplines this year in the season of Lent. The challenge is, from Ash Wednesday to Easter Sunday, spend 30 minutes a day in silence and solitude. I believe God will speak to you, in the silence, if you take up this practice

            I found it to be difficult. In the silence, I think about the NCAA basketball tournament, the workout I’m going to try to get done at the YMCA, the tasks I need to get accomplished that afternoon, and 1000 other things. As soon as I drive one distraction from my mind, another takes its place. Some days I can get really quiet and centered so that I give God my full attention. Other days, I spend 30 minutes reaching for God with one hand and fending off competing thoughts with the other.

            This practice takes practice. This very morning, frustrated, I started writing in my journal about my frustration. I was drawn to Lamentations 3:23. God’s mercy is new every morning. God always has more grace to give, and I always need it, and He always gives it. So I thought, if God gives me grace, I’ll extend grace to myself. I finished a distracted 30 minutes. Tomorrow, I’ll try again.

            That’s my word for you. Try again. And again. And again. Relationships demand commitment and sticktoitiveness. In silence, we tune out other stimuli in order to give God our full attention. Learning to be still; learning to hear with the heart; it all takes effort and trial and error. If today’s effort in silent mediation faltered, try again tomorrow.

“It is good to sit alone in silence” (Lamentations 3:27). My prayer is first, you’ll try this, silent prayer, every day, 30 minutes; and second, as you do, you’ll discover why the writer of Lamentations says this is “good.” It is because the solitude and silence are where we meet God.

Ash Wednesday - 2021

 

Watch - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LIkXDJOckJA

Ash Wednesday – COVID-19

Hillside Church – February 17, 2021

Streamed Worship Service

 

 

            Welcome to the Hillside Church Ash Wednesday for 2021.  We’re coming to you from Culbreth Road in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. 

            There are many Baptist churches that only loosely follow the liturgical calendar, don’t make much of the season Lent, and do not have an Ash Wednesday worship service.

            In our Baptist congregation, we do observe Advent, Lent, holy week, Pentecost, and other high points marking the liturgical year, but, true to our Baptist sense of independence, we don’t feel bound by tradition.  We appreciate and honor tradition, we see the value in it, but, when necessary, we deviate from tradition. 

            Ash Wednesday is an example.  I have had colleagues I respect insist that on Ash Wednesday, using the ash of the previous year’s burned Palm Sunday palms you must impose ashes on the forehead of each worshiper as you say “From dust you are and to dust you shall return.”  The phrase is a quote, Genesis 3:19, words of the curse after Adam and Eve had sinned.  The reason I disagree with my esteemed colleagues who insist that this ritual with these words are what makes Ash Wednesday Ash Wednesday is theological.

            The coming of Christ undoes the devastating effects of the fall (Adam and Even’s eating of forbidden fruit).  Our sin, which renders us dust, has been nailed to the cross.  The resurrection of Jesus assures that we will not return to dust.  As he rose, so will we.  We are resurrection people, new creations, bound for eternal life in the kingdom of God. 

            So, why bother with Ash Wednesday at all? 

            While we are bound for resurrection, we’re not there yet.  We’re in the world, reaching for new creation, celebrating the in-breaking of the Kingdom, but we live as new creations while serving God in a fallen world that, because of sin, is bound for destruction.  We exist in the overlap between fall and salvation.

            By worshiping on Ash Wednesday, we acknowledge our own sin, our need for forgiveness, and our need for change.  This is a time of spiritual renewal.  This is a time to identify what in our thinking, in our way of life, and in our outlook prevents us from growing closer to God in Christ and makes it difficult for us to love our neighbors as we love ourselves.  Once we’ve identified those areas in which we need to grow or change, then we commit to spiritual practices and disciplines that will help us see with new eyes.  Fasting, confession, numerous forms of prayer, are examples of disciplines believers undertake to help them put their focus on their relationship with God in Christ. 

            The ashes call to mind the way we see people throughout the Bible express remorse and repentance.  They would heap ashes on their heads, mess up their hair, and wear coarse sack cloth.  All these rituals of repentance functioned to signal that this person was trying to turn from sin and turn back to God.  When we impose the cross in ash on the foreheads of worshipers in our modern context, we’re trying to turn from sin and turn back to God. 

            This year, with social distancing still needed, we will not do a traditional Ash Wednesday worship.  Instead, we come to you virtually.  We encourage you to adopt disciplines of confession and repentance to which you will commit from now until Easter Sunday, April 4.

            From our youth group, I have with me M__, E__, I__, J__, and H__.  They will do our scripture reading.  Some of these verses are traditional Ash Wednesday passages.  Some are readings I have selected.  After they have read, I’ll offer a few comments about the call of God to us that is specific to this time, 2021, pandemic, Lent.

 

Readings

Psalm 51:1-4  - M__

Psalm 51:9-13  - E__

2 Corinthians 5:20-21  - I__

Matthew 18:21-22  - J__

Zechariah 3:1:-5 - H__

 

            Confession, repentance, and forgiveness are themes found in every reading we’ve just heard.  Moreover, a fresh start, the chance to begin again, is a natural outflow from repentance and forgiveness.  At Hillside, we’ve begun 2021, imagining starting life anew, post-pandemic and post-election. 

            Discord and disagreement over politics, racial injustice, and over how we as a society should respond to COVID-19 has deeply divided American culture.  As followers of Jesus, what can we say in this time fraught with anger and violence?  I think we can be voices of calm, grace, and peace.  Now that vaccines are here and the election is over, we can invite our neighbors and friends to come together and start again. 

            Starting again is a theme in the words of the prophets Haggai and Zechariah.  They prophesied about the same time, both calling the nation to return to God and rebuild life with worship as the organizing activity for a community founded on faith in God. 

            In Zechariah, the Satan stands to accuse Joshua the high priest.  The priesthood was one of many institutions in ancient Israelite life that had become badly corrupted.  The Satan would have recited all the ways the priesthood led the people to rebel against God, but the Lord immediately silenced the Satan. 

            The people’s sins had been punished, forgiven, and were no longer an obstacle blocking the way between the people and God.  God shut the Satan up and then declared a new message.  “The Lord has chosen Jerusalem” (3:2).

            Joshua was dressed in filthy rags, indicating the degradation sin had brought upon God’s people.  The angel took these clothes dripped in decay and exchanged them for sparkling new clothes, representing the washing and the new beginning.  He once again was acceptable as a priest and the people were once again chosen by God.  In the high priest Joshua’s change of clothing, we see how complete is God’s forgiveness of us. 

            Our sins are washed away and when God looks at us, he sees the holiness and righteousness of Christ.  We are made new.  Colossians 3 calls to mind this image from Zechariah 3 of Joshua changing clothes.  Verse 9, “Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have stripped off the old self with its practices and have clothed yourselves with the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge according to the image of its creator.”  And also Colossians 3:12, “As God’s chosen ones, beloved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience.”

            What spiritual disciplines can you undertake from now until Easter to remind yourself that your sins don’t define you.  You’ve been made new in Christ.  How can you and I remember to clothe ourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience.

            I think we pray every day.  Read the Bible every day.  Be specific in striving to embody these values in the relationships of our every day life: with a friend; with a boss; with the person in your Zoom call; with a son or a sister or a neighbor.  Approach these relationships with the idea of Christ in you coming through.  Don’t dwell on how you’d react to the other.  How would Christ love him or her?  Be a conduit for the love of Christ.

            And, when we fail, because we do, remember, we are forgiven.  Stay connected to the Holy Spirit through constant thought prayers.  Let God’s power be at work in you. 

            From here until Easter, it’s a journey.  We hope you’ll take it with us.  We pray you’ll see God at work in your life. 

            We close with this blessing from Revelation chapter 1:

Grace and peace to you from him who is and who was and who is to come, and from the seven spirits who are before his throne, and from Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth.

To him who loves us and freed us from our sins by his blood, and made us to be a kingdom, priests serving his God and Father, to him be glory and dominion forever and ever.  Amen.

Revelation 1:4-6

Ash Wednesday Sermon - Feb 26,2 2020

watch - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oNw9gq3i3Io

Ash Wednesday, February 26, 2020

          Reading an email correspondence recently, I noted that the sender put “Matthew 6:27” underneath his signature.  I don’t really know this person other than that we are a part of the same email group.  I had received several messages from him, and as I looked back, I realized, he always signs that way.  His name, and then Matthew 6:27. 

          So, I reached out to him just say, ‘Hey, I didn’t realize you were a Christian.  I think it is really great that you sign your messages that way.’  He hasn’t responded to my overture.  Like I said, I don’t really know him.

          Jesus is speaking.  Matthew 6 is the middle of his Sermon on the Mount.  In verse 27 he asks, “Can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?”  Of course, this jumped out at me because of the spiritual discipline I committed to uphold for Lent 2020.  Through prayer, time in worship, and daily practice, my 2020 Lenten spiritual discipline is to renounce worry.  Jesus says in verse 25, “I tell you, do not worry about your life.”  I want to do my best to follow that command literally.

I wrote this in my February 2020 church newsletter article.  Typically, we don’t broadcast our spiritual disciplines for the world to see.  In Matthew 6, verses 3, 6, and 18, Jesus warns against announcing when we give to the poor or pray or fast as spiritual disciplines.  We most certainly should do these things, but Jesus encourages us to practice these disciplines in secret, for God’s eyes, not to gain spiritual credit in the eyes of others.   Spiritual disciplines should never be cases of “look-at-me.”  Our spiritual disciplines should draw us closer to God.

So, why do I announce mine every year?  I do it in my role as pastor.  I hope church members will follow my example.  I don’t mean each person needs to practice the disciplines I’ve committed to.  Rather, I encourage each Christian who would follow Christ to follow my example by undertaking spiritual disciplines that will specifically help him or her grow in Christ.  Maybe for you it is a practice you need to spend more time on - service or prayer.  Or, maybe for someone else, it is giving more money, so that you discover God is who ensures your life, not your bank account.  For another, it might be fasting, so that we discover God fills us and we crave him more than satiating our appetites.

For me, the discipline this year is to renounce worry as an act of faith, a pathway to joy, and a step of obedience.  Why this rather unconventional discipline?

Without going into too many details or rehashing stories told too many times, 2017-2019 have been difficult years for me.  Each year ended with me thinking, “Whew, I’m glad that’s over,” only to be greeted by more severe challenges at the very start of the new year.  I’ve come to dread what the next January might bring.  Followers of Jesus are not to live in dread.  We are called to joy. 

Each of the past three years included many nights with me wide awake at 2, 3, 4AM.  Sometimes, I could name the weighty issues that drove sleep from me.  I tried reading, praying, playing online chess with people halfway around the world.  Often, I just ended up brooding until daylight and then plowing through the next day.  Other sleepless nights, I could not name the demon that wouldn’t allow me rest.  I simply sat with the foreboding hanging over me.  Followers of Jesus should be able to rest secure in his arms.  He modeled this, sleeping soundly as the boat he and the disciples were in was tossed about by angry waves. 

Reflecting upon how much the stresses of pastoring and parenting repeatedly shook my sense of wellbeing, it became clear, I was not setting a good example to my church family.  We know the world is drowning in sin and bound for death.  Why would we be surprised when things get tough and life is a struggle?  Part of my responsibility is to help us, God’s family, see God in the midst of the storm.  The challenges of 2017, ‘18, and ‘19 may subside or be overcome, but this new year will provide obstacles of its own, and when we overcome them, 2021 looms.  Joy doesn’t come when the problems go away.  Joy comes when we set our eyes on Jesus even as we find ourselves in the midst of struggle.

Thus, I knew I had to get a grip!  And I knew I couldn’t do it on my own power.  I knew I couldn’t just will myself to stop worrying.  I need God’s help.  God offers that help.  So, I need to turn my attention from the worries and stress to the God who helps.  

I wrote the newsletter article and declared my intent to renounce worry.  That same day, I went to hear the orthopedist’s conclusions about my ankle.  He said it was messed up in about 4 different ways and the best bet would be surgery, followed by 6 weeks of no weight bearing. 

I’ve spent the last 25 years visiting church members before they have surgery.  I pray with them.  Then I go home.  They are in that hospital bed for a while, and then rehab, and then maybe they return to health, or maybe not. And I have prayed, maybe while in morning quiet time, or maybe while out walking or jogging.  I worry, I pray, and then I get on with my healthy life. 

It’s a life where I feel like I need to have a lot of control.  Whether it is my family, or the church, I need to feel like I am in control.  I’m not!  But I need to feel like I am.  After March 6, I won’t be able to pretend that.  I won’t be able to rely on my own strength and independence.  If I want to come to the office to work, I’ll need Candy or I__ to drive me.  At home, there are a number of adjustments we will need to make to accommodate my post-surgery condition.

Immediately after the talk with the surgeon, the implications began settling in, and it made me … no, I couldn’t.  I had just hours before declared my intent to renounce worry.  Could God so quickly put my resolve to the test?

Let’s be clear.  My problems are very small compared to what many people here have had to face.  I know that.  The issues that worry me come in the natural course of life.  The degenerative condition in both my ankles would have required surgery whether I declared my intent to renounce worry or not.  God didn’t cause me to need the surgery just to test whether I really would lean on Him and not worry.  Rather, God met me in my distress, both the pressures of the past three years and my more recent fears.  You may perceive your problems to be much bigger than mine, or not as significant.  Whatever you’re facing, joy comes when we meet Jesus in it, take His hand, and allow ourselves to be led as He walks us out of it. 

Jesus knew his journey would lead to his death, and I believe, he knew it would be death on a cross.  Never did he show the slightest apprehension about his fate. In the Garden of Gethsemane, the night before his crucifixion, he begged for another way, but that was not the prayer of worry.  That was a prayer of anguish at being betrayed, denied, and abandoned. 

He says, “I tell you, do not worry.”  He had the authority to give this command because he is Lord, because he faced much worse than what we face, and because he did it without worrying himself.  His “do not worry” is not an overture of encouragement.  It’s a command from the Holy God. 

Along with the command comes grace, because try as we might, we cannot follow it, not perfectly.  Committing to spiritual disciplines is our attempt to lean-in, into obedience, into the realities of the Kingdom. 

I wonder how the guy who signs his name with Matthew 6:27 is doing in his own efforts to renounce worry.  As I said, he never got back to me.  But someone who does know him told me a little more about what led him to this verse.  He is young, under 25.  Last year, his sister died while having a seizure.  Unbelievable grief!  What more can be said?  Jesus’ words of promise - promise that we need not worry - have been a lifeline for this young man.

Having turned fifty, having just gotten over the flu, facing one ankle surgery and possibly another, as well as other procedures that come with turning 50, 2020 will be for me a year of attending on my own health.  To do that well, I need to focus more than ever on who I am in Christ.  The church is His and He’ll take care of it and even help it thrive.  And he’ll help me do my part in it, but he will have HIs successes with or without me.  My family is his and I have my part in it.  Through prayer, worship, and daily intent, I must lean into Him.

I close by inviting you to consider your own story.   The God who walks with young people through unbearable grief and helps 50-year-olds come to grips with their own frailty is the same God that walked Jesus down the road to the cross and then out of the empty tomb.  That God loves you.  God knows your story.  So, spend time considering your story, especially the struggles that threaten your spiritual life. Then select spiritual disciplines to which you will commit from now, Ash Wednesday until Easter Sunday this year.  Through the consistent practice of these disciplines, lean into Jesus’ embrace.  You’ll grow in your relationship with Him and even in times of trial, you will have joy.

AMEN

Ash Wednesday - Joel 2

Ash Wednesday, February 14, 2018

We open the Bible and listen as the Word speaks to us.

² Hear this, O elders, O Church
    give ear, all inhabitants of the land!
Has such a thing happened in your days,
    or in the days of your ancestors?
³ Tell your children of it,
    and let your children tell their children,
    and their children another generation.

¹⁵ Alas for the day!
For the day of the Lord is near,
    and as destruction from the Almighty^[a] it comes.
¹⁶ Is not the food cut off
    before our eyes,
joy and gladness
    cut off from the house of our God?

¹⁷ The seed shrivels under the clods,^[b]
    the storehouses are desolate;
the granaries are ruined
    because the grain has failed.
¹⁸ How the animals groan!
    The herds of cattle wander about
because there is no pasture for them;
    even the flocks of sheep are dazed.  (1:2-3, 15-18)

2 Blow the trumpet in Zion; In America; In Chapel Hill;
    sound the alarm on God’s holy mountain!
Let all the inhabitants of the land tremble,
    for the day of the Lord is coming, it is near—
² a day of darkness and gloom,
    a day of clouds and thick darkness!
Like blackness spread upon the mountains
    a great and powerful army comes;
their like has never been from of old,
    nor will be again after them
    in ages to come. (2:1-2)

            Now, what do we say?  More importantly, what do we do?  The Word has had its say.  The Day of the Lord is imminent, a day of darkness and gloom.  We say, “God is love,” and it is true.  Indeed, God is love, teaches us how to love, and expects us as His followers and worshipers to live in love.  Yes, God is love.  But that is not all there is to be said about God.

            Make no mistake.  The prophet Joel does not mince words.  The day of the Lord is coming; it can’t be stopped.  It is a day to fear.  And the destruction on that day ultimately comes from the Lord.  If we were to add the words of the prophet Nahum to Joel’s prophecy we would see that God gets angry.  Nahum says “the Lord rages against his enemies” (1:2). 

            Joel does not name God’s rage, but rather describes it.  He announces the coming destruction as inevitable and originating from God.  The thing about the prophet Joel is scholars really do not know when Joel wrote his prophecy.  Nahum is clearly aimed at Nineveh and the Assyrians.  Joel does promise redemption for the southern Kingdom of Jews, Judah, and wrath for Judah’s enemies.

            However, Joel cannot be fixed at any point in Israel’s history. The message is appropriate any time.  We understand sin to be humanity in rebellion against God.  Consciously or unconsciously, people choose to be their own authority instead of submitting to God as authority.  We decide we know what’s best for ourselves, for people around us, and for the world in which we live – instead of trusting that God knows the best way for the world to run. 

This notion of human sovereignty usurps God’s authority and this attitude and posture and accompanying actions produce sin.  So the ominous warnings of Joel, the onset of the Day of Judgment fits our circumstance.  We read both Nahum and Joel as divinely inspired prophecy.  The words originally spoke to circumstances in Israel with relation to Judah and to the foreign invaders, Assyria, but a deeper message rings true across the span of history to our day.  In Christ, we are grafted into Israel, into Judah, the inheritance of David.  The prophecies originally for the chosen people speak a fresh word of God to all of us who have been drawn to God through the death and resurrection of Jesus. 

The God of love is also a God of wrath.  God takes sin seriously and sin, collective and individual sin, cuts us off from God.  And we all sin. For this reason, Joel is very concerned.

⁵ Wake up, you drunkards, and weep;
    and wail, all you wine-drinkers,
over the sweet wine,
    for it is cut off from your mouth.

⁸ Lament like a virgin dressed in sackcloth
    for the husband of her youth.
⁹ The grain offering and the drink offering are cut off
    from the house of the Lord.
The priests mourn,
    the ministers of the Lord.
¹⁰ The fields are devastated,
    the ground mourns;
for the grain is destroyed,
    the wine dries up,
    the oil fails.

¹¹ Be dismayed, you farmers,
    wail, you vinedressers,
over the wheat and the barley;
    for the crops of the field are ruined.
¹² The vine withers,
    the fig tree droops.
Pomegranate, palm, and apple—
    all the trees of the field are dried up;
surely, joy withers away
    among the people. (1:5, 8-12).

            So, again, the question: what do we think and say?  If we believe this from Joel is truly Word of God, a word to be trusted, then judgment is coming.  We can look back through history and identify possible moments of judgment on worshiping communities.  And we certainly believe this promise of reckoning will be part of the last day, Christ’s return, the end of history, and the beginning of a new age.  Is it inevitable that we must face that day, as Joel says, lamenting in sack cloth, joy having withered away?

            Lament should be a part of our prayer life.  Christians are Easter-focused and rightfully so, but there is evil in the world and even in each of our own hearts.  Lament is a needed form of prayer.  Maybe this year, as you journey through the season of Lent to the cross of Christ, you will learn the discipline of praying prayers of lament.  Heather and I can help you develop a Bible reading plan for this. 

            Joel most certainly lamented.  But that’s not all he did.  He did not know that God would come in human form, Jesus of Nazareth.  What God did in Jesus was so unexpected, even the disciples who walked with Jesus were caught by surprise until they spent time with him after the resurrection.  Yet, lacking the resurrection perspective, Joel still trusted in God’s goodness.  When the terror of that day weighed upon him, he turned the only place he could turn – to God. 

¹⁴ Sanctify a fast,
    call a solemn assembly.
Gather the elders
    and all the inhabitants of the land
to the house of the Lord your God,
    and cry out to the Lord.

¹⁹ To you, O Lord, I cry.
For fire has devoured
    the pastures of the wilderness,
and flames have burned
    all the trees of the field.
²⁰ Even the wild animals cry to you
    because the watercourses are dried up,
and fire has devoured
    the pastures of the wilderness.

            Walter Brueggemann says that when prophets like Joel speak in this way about God and about the day of the Lord, the prophets intervene between a holy and angry God and his sinful people.  In this intervention, God is “palpably available” to His people both as a threat and as an opportunity.[i]  For us, as we stand, knees knocking, teeth chattering, exposed in an uncomfortable awareness of our own sins before God, which is it, threat or opportunity?

            Again, Joel, the prophet for all times and places, guides us as prophets do.  I fully believe the prophets were as terrified as their words are terrifying.  I believe they wrote with trembling hands.  With a thumping heart, Joel steps past the awful threat to a place of possibility.

¹² Yet even now, says the Lord,
    return to me with all your heart,
with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning;
¹³     rend your hearts and not your clothing.
Return to the Lord, your God,
    for he is gracious and merciful,
slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love,
    and relents from punishing.
¹⁴ Who knows whether he will not turn and relent,
    and leave a blessing behind him?

            The dark clouds of wrath gather on the oncoming horizon, but Joel looks past that, past the gloom to the God behind the wrath because he knows that God is indeed a God of love who wants to forgive us.  “Yet even now” there is time to repent.  Repentance is emotional, draining work, but we do it because we want to be a right relationship with God.  He is full of grace and mercy.  His love is endless and unfailing. 

            What do we say?  Lord, I am sorry.  And in our prayers, we name our sins and lay them out before God. 

What do we do? We turn away from the things in life that draw us into sin, draw us away from a close walk with God. 

The story of Joel gains depth for us when we read it knowing we are taking the first step toward the cross.  On the cross, Jesus bears the weight and the punishment for sin.  Sin leads to pain, loss, death, and alienation from God.  Jesus shoulders that entire burden on the cross.  Knowing that, we see the depths of despair Joel only imagined, but we also see the mountain top of hope Joel held so tenaciously. 

“Who knows whether or not God will relent and leave a blessing instead of complete devastation?” 

Who knows?  We know!  We know what God did in Jesus.  Jesus is the Savior of the world and all who receive forgiveness and come to life in his name will be spared God’s wrath and, on Judgment Day, enter the Kingdom as sons and daughters of God. 

The way I am going to center my own life, as I search inside myself for a faith as gripping as Joel’s, is a Lenten fast.  Christians will give things up for Lent and I am doing that this year.  I encourage you to do so as well.  For me, one of the places I spend a lot of time – time where I get distracted and forget to focus on the presence of God – is Facebook.  During Lent, I am going to greatly reduce the time I spend on Facebook and even more, I am going to cut out commenting on Facebook.  If I don’t give a “Like” to one of your posts, it is because I won’t be doing that during Lent.

Now, I cannot complete disengage.  Facebook is the way I get in touch with some of my really good friends.  We are heading to Ethiopia next month, and I will want to post pictures and report about the trip on Facebook.  However, I won’t be commenting and I won’t be deep-diving into Facebook debates.

How will I fill in that time?  I will spend more time praying, more time with my wife and kids, and more time reading and writing about faith and theology.  For some, writing is a distraction.  For me, it is one means by which I meet God.  Abstaining from Facebook interactions and instead engaging in theological thought and spiritual reflection is how I pause to say “Yet, even now, God may relent.”  It is how I return to the Lord with all my heart. 

I encourage you to find the way you can pause.  Understand in your life what needs to be set aside.  What has gotten in the way and is obstructing your view of God?  Fast.  Whatever that distraction is, minimize it or remove it between now and Easter.  You have to figure this out and do it in your life.  (1) Pause. (2) Take a concrete action that you bring into the pause so that you can sit in the thought, “Yet even now, God may relent from judgment.” 

In that pause, that fast, fill in spiritual disciplines of prayer or study that will draw your eyes and heart to God.  Do the work to open yourself to the God who loves you, forgives, and wants to be in the center of your life. 

I close with one more reading from Joel.  We are sinners, but in Christ, we are a part of God’s people and we are forgiven sinners.  Through the prophet God said to His people and to us,

²⁶ You shall eat in plenty and be satisfied,
    and praise the name of the Lord your God,
    who has dealt wondrously with you.
And my people shall never again be put to shame.
²⁷ You shall know that I am in the midst of Israel,
    and that I, the Lord, am your God and there is no other.
And my people shall never again be put to shame.

^28 [d] Then afterward
    I will pour out my spirit on all flesh;
your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,
    your old men shall dream dreams,
    and your young men shall see visions.
²⁹ Even on the male and female slaves,
    in those days, I will pour out my spirit.

³⁰ I will show portents in the heavens and on the earth, blood and fire and columns of smoke. ³¹ The sun shall be turned to darkness, and the moon to blood, before the great and terrible day of the Lord comes. ³² Then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved. (2:26-32a)

AMEN

---

[i] Brueggemann, Walter (1997), Theology of the Old Testament, Fortress Press (Minneapolis), p.649.