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The Beauty of the Ashes: A Change of Position

Come, let us bow down, and bend the knee,

and kneel before the Lord our Maker.

Psalm 95:6

Repentance is a major theme of the season of Lent. One of the best ways for me to showPraying-on-Knees my repentance before God is to change my position. Yes, I mean literally change my position before Him. As we come to the first Friday of week one, the Psalmist reminds us of our proper place before the Lord – on our knees. It seems there are very few times in our modern world that we actually kneel down before the Lord God. Oh, for sure we have neat phrases like, “we’re never stronger than when we’re on our knees,” and “the only way to really rise up is to bow down,” but do we really believe it?

Lent offers us a chance to reset the position of our hearts before God, to remind ourselves that life really isn’t all about us and what happens to us. On Fridays, in remembrance of the day Jesus died, I like to spend some time on my knees contemplating the greatest act of love the world ever knew – the self-sacrifice of our God for love of His creation.

Lent offers us a chance to reset the position of our hearts before God

How can we possibly say thank you to our Father for such an incredible act of love? Well, the truth is we can’t ever fully thank God for his great sacrifice, but we can try. In fact, trying to thank God for His sending Christ to reconcile us to himself is really the heart of Lent. All our prayers, fasting, and works of mercy should be offered up as a sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving to the one who died for us.

I want to encourage you to spend some time on your knees physically this first weekend of Lent, if you can. I find that the more I involve my whole body in an act of worship and devotion, it becomes a more humbling experience and I hear my Father’s voice even better. My heart is drawn even more into the Father’s heart… “for He is our God, and we are the people of His pasture” …and as the psalmist continues, “Oh, that today we would hearken to His voice!” (Ps. 95:7-8)

“God had brought me to my knees and made me acknowledge my own nothingness, and out of that knowledge I had been reborn. I was no longer the centre of my life and therefore I could see God in everything.”

Bede Griffiths

This weekend, try listening for the Father’s voice from a new position, like on your knees. You might be surprised how much better you can hear.

Shalom for a Holy Lent,

Pastor Brad

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The Beauty of the Ashes: Rainy Days and Mondays

Remember your word to your servant, because you have given me hope.

This is my comfort in my trouble, that your promise gives me life.

Psalm 119:49-50

Rainy Days and Mondays pic“Hangin around, nothin to do but frown, rainy days and Mondays always get me down.” Back in 1971, Karen Carpenter sang these words to the top of the Pop Music charts. While I don’t know what she was feeling when she wrote those words, they sure connected with a lot of people, including me. In the lyrics to the song, she alludes to the fact that the feeling has come and gone before, and there’s no need to talk it out. Actually, I think we need to talk it out if we’re feeling the blues, and the first person we need to start talking it out with is God.

I guess everyone sings the Blues sometimes, but there’s a quality of life found in the Christian faith that transcends those rainy day blues. As I write this it’s raining outside. I have to confess, I love rainy days. Kinda crazy, I know, but I just like the way the rain smells fresh and the watered ground seems to come to life. That’s what God’s Word does for our souls; it’s like fresh rain on dry and thirsty land.

“That’s what God’s Word does for our souls;

it’s like fresh rain on dry and thirsty land.”

The Psalmist prays for God to remember his word to his servant. He knows that God speaks words of life and promise that bring hope and comfort. In fact, he says God’s words are life itself. Pretty cool isn’t it? The God who spoke creation into existence with His words of life, spoke words long ago in the scriptures that still bring life today as we read and remember them.

I always think of the season of Lent as a time of refreshing Spring showers from God, watering the garden of my soul. Gardens tend to get weeds in them after the long winter of neglect and so do our souls if we don’t tend them properly.

The beauty of the Christian life is that the Living God invites us into communion with the Himself. We don’t have to let our souls and spirits get dry and thirsty – we don’t have to get the blues, but if we do, we have the promises of God’s word to bring us hope and comfort.

Karen Carpenter also wrote in those lyrics that, “Funny, but it seems that it’s the only thing to do, run and find the one who loves me”. I hope she meant that the “one” was God, although she may have meant some one she was in love with or her brother Richard. However, like the psalmist, we can know that when rainy days or Mondays or anything starts to get us down we can run to God, the God who made us, who loves us, and who promises to bring beauty from ashes…

“…to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all who mourn; to grant to those who mourn in Zion— to give them a beautiful headdress instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, the garment of praise instead of a faint spirit; that they may be called oaks of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, that he may be glorified.”

Isaiah 61:3

Shalom for a Holy Lent,

Pastor Brad

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Broken Bones

“…let the bones you have broken rejoice.” Psalm 51:8 Slide1

 

I was walking backward into Tommy’s yard while reading the graffiti that was painted on the boxcars that sat on the train tracks beside his back yard. I don’t remember now what the graffiti said because what happened next…well, it was “lights out, Alice!” Tommy’s baseball bat landed squarely across my nose as I turned around to tell the boys of what I had just read on the graffiti.

 

I was in the second grade, about 7 years old. Some of the neighborhood gang was playing baseball in Tommy’s back yard, which when I think about it was not a very bright idea, considering if one of them ever really got a hold of the ball in a good hit it would probably have knocked out a neighbor’s window, or worse yet – a neighbor. Actually, that’s exactly what happened, only I was the neighbor who got knocked out.

 

The next thing I remembered was being picked up off the ground with an intense pain in my head and no breath in my lungs; it seemed to have been knocked clean out of me. I remember trying to gasp for breath and not getting any. I quickly turned and ran home (about one block away) and of course, my breath did return after a few huge gasps.

 

Once home, my mother quickly drove me to the hospital. I remember the extreme look of concern on her face. I’m sure like any mother, when she heard what happened she was afraid I’d have some kind of permanent brain damage from such a blow to the head.

 

The Doctor said it was a really clean break; the bone was broken perfectly on both sides. How about that? I’d been saved from a life of a crooked nose. If Tommy had hit the ball as squarely as he hit my nose, he would have definitely knocked out a window somewhere over the home run fence. All I could think of was how hard that bat hit me, and how hard Tommy must have swung it.

 

As we read Psalm 51 in our Ash Wednesday service the other night, I thought about my broken nose all those years ago when we came to verse eight; “…let the bones You have broken rejoice.” That’s the only bone I’ve ever broken, and technically I think the nose is mostly cartilage, not bone. The idea that we can rejoice in our broken bones, the brokenness of our lives, is a key to understanding the spirit of many Psalms, as well as life in general.

 

God allows brokenness to occur that we should be humbled by the fragile nature of our lives, and to realize that He is our salvation, the source of all healing – all good things. Verse eight starts out, “You shall make me hear joy and gladness…” As we begin this Lenten season with days of fasting and self-denial, I want to encourage you to see the joy God wants to show you in your brokenness. If we allow the trials of life to humble us, rather than harden us, we’ll be able to see God’s love and forgiveness mending our broken bones (lives).

 

Fridays and Wednesdays are traditional days of fasting for Christians in remembrance of Christ’s crucifixion. But for today, let your broken bones rejoice and be glad. Know that while God isn’t the cause of the brokenness in our lives, He loves us and wants to draw us closer through it all, if we let Him.

 

Shalom, for a Holy Lent,

Pastor Brad

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The Beauty of the Ashes: A Poem for the beginning of Lent

ash-wednesday

For the beauty of the Ashes,

For the glory they once revealed,

In these no words could ever capture,

God’s highest work in me He sealed.

 

For the beauty of the love that fills the world,

Even though in anguish with devils filled,

Let not my heart ere be defeated,

For all is thus, as God has willed.

 

For the beauty of Creation,

That sings a hymn of love so free,

May it join my heart as it proclaims,

This song of love, all for Thee

 

Because your beauty hung on a tree,

I sing of Thy goodness, and I sing of Thy sorrow,

For all You suffered, and for all I can see,

What ere befalls, I shall sing of the ‘morrow.

 

The ‘morrow when all is at last fulfilled,

No more by faith, but Thy face I will see,

So, give me today upon my brow,

The beauty of the Ashes, to be seen in me.

 

 

Brad Riley