Lent Day 40

Dear God, I don’t have quite as much time this morning because I need to be at mass by 7:30. So I’m going to get right into these scriptures from Sacred Invitation: Lenten Devotions Inspired by the Book of Common Prayer.

• AM Psalms: 24, 29
• PM Psalm; 103
• AM Zechariah 9:9-12
• PM Zechariah 12:9-13:9
• Matthew 21:12-17
• 1 Timothy 6:12-16

Psalms 24, 29 – I love these psalms because they are just raw praise. Oh, Father, Jesus, and Holy Spirit, everything is yours. All glory to you.

Psalm 103 – David really knew how to worship you in poem/psalm. I think really appropriate worship of you is something I still am not as great at. Just really tuning into to how magnificent you are and expressing it. Maybe I need to work on that. I don’t know. There’s also this thing about style, and David and I do not have similar styles. But God, I do worship you. You are my God. You are everything.

Zechariah 9:9-12 – What a great and hopeful passage that helps give a context for the 70 years later that Jeremiah prophesied about. The exile is over. The sons and daughters of those who left are now coming back to restore what you had for them. Oh, great joy!

Zechariah 12:9-13:9 – I am not sure I’ve ever spent time with this prophecy of Jesus 500 years before his birth, but it is quite something. Beautiful in retrospect, but so sad in describing what Jesus is going to do and the mourning that will take place. The pain of Passion week. Just the pain. I don’t want to miss that this week.

Matthew 21:12-17 – Let the games begin, right? Offending the money changers and the Pharisees. Healing. People getting the wrong idea about you, Jesus, from both sides. Those that hated you didn’t understand. Those who adored you didn’t understand. Frankly, there are so many times I don’t understand what you are doing in the moment either. I don’t understand what you are doing in my life right not. Thankfully, I don’t have to understand. Guide me in this moment and give me your direction in what I should do now.

1 Timothy 6:12-16 – These last words of Paul to Timothy. Imploring him to “fight the good fight of the faith, take hold of the eternal life to which [he] was called when [he] made [his] good confession in the presence of many witnesses.” Help me to do the same.

I pray all of this in Jesus, and with your Holy Spirit,

Amen

 

Zechariah 14:8-9

On that day life-giving waters will flow out from Jerusalem, half toward the Dead Sea and half toward the Mediterranean, flowing continuously in both summer and winter. And the Lord will be king over all the earth. On that day there will be one Lord —his name alone will be worshiped.
Zechariah 14:8-9

Dear God, I was having lunch with a friend today and Israel came up. He’s had some recent experience there and he mentioned that “most” Israelis are not devout and do not take their Jewish faith seriously. I don’t know how true that is, but I’d have to say it seems to be consistent with my perception. To be sure, I know some Jewish people who take their love for you and faith in you very seriously. But from a distance and what they portray publicly, I don’t see much mention of you from their society as a whole.

Which leads me to our country. It feels like we (and I mean the collective, broad-stroke stereotype of “we”) are becoming more and more believers that there is a God and not followers of you. This same friend mentioned his three adult children are very different in their faith. one is practically a monk (if not an actual monk—I’m not clear on his title, but he’s something in the Catholic Church). Another child is sounded to me like a believer in you and not a follower of you. The third is totally agnostic, if not atheist, pursuing morality as a principle by which to live his life. This isn’t dissimilar from my own children or many children of friends whom I know—or many people my age. We are drifting. We are the frog in the pot, cluelessly approaching the boiling point.

Father, Zechariah tells us in this prophecy that there will be a day when your name alone will be worshipped. I also heard an interview on a podcast yesterday where they talked about whether or not they should be worried about the future of the Christian church. Their ultimate answer was no, in the long run your church will be fine because you are in charge. But it might have to go through a refining process over a long period of time. It might get smaller, but ultimately more influential. One day the churches and the Christian faith we planted in the Southern Hemisphere might have to save faith in the northern hemisphere, but your church will be fine. Well, please, show me what you would have me do in the lives around me in your world so that I might be a small part of any ultimate plan you have.

In Jesus’s name I pray,

Amen