Why am I here this week?
I thought that I finally figured it out last week, but now that I’m here
this week I’m not so sure again. I mean,
I’ve seen glimpses through this week that God is still at work, but frankly my
week has been hard and there is so little in the daily news that makes me
confident that what I am doing here today means a hill of beans in the long
run. It’s easier to be a skeptic this morning than a
believer.
Now I don’t know why that happens, but we are so quick to
forget what it means to be a follower of Jesus and what we should be doing with
our lives. But fortunately that is
something that is common to every person and so the Church throughout its
history has tried to do things that help us on our journey. One way is the yearly church calendar, and
the second is the lectionary of scripture readings. I preach out of a common set of readings that
have been put together so that over a three year cycle pretty much everything
that is in the bible has an opportunity to be read and studied. That way we don’t get stuck in a rut or
concentrate on things that we like to hear while ignoring things that are
harder for us to deal with. The second
thing is the annual calendar in which we cycle through the great works of God
on our behalf and then are given a chance to respond. The year starts in Advent and we begin the
story of our deliverance by remembering all that the Christmas season
announces. Then there is a short period
of time when we concentrate on the work of Jesus Christ as He proclaims to us
the coming of God’s Kingdom. Then there
is that intense time of Lent and Holy Week, Resurrection, Ascension, and
Pentecost. By then the story of what God
has done for us has been told with power.
But then there is a long period of time called Ordinary Times
marked by the green altar cloths. And we
mark the Sundays in this period as the Sundays after Pentecost, after the
sending of the Holy Spirit to us as the promise and power of God. We do not concentrate so much on what God has
done for us, or the recording of the story of His salvation…..this is our
season, and the question put to us in this time is this….if God has done all of
these things on your behalf, if He has given grace, forgiveness, deliverance,
freedom from bondage, and the promise of eternal life...how are you going to
live because of it? Has it made a
difference in your life? What has God
given to you to do with this new life He has freely given?
That’s part of why we gather on the Lord’s Day each
Sunday. To be reminded that we are not
the people that we used to be. We may still struggle each day we live, but the
fact that God has acted on our behalf makes us different and gives us purpose,
direction, and a job to do on His behalf.
We just need a little help to remember what those things are and find
the encouragement together to move forward one more week in the name of Jesus.
This is the part of the year where God does not work for us,
but God chooses to work through us.
To us is given that amazing task of doing God’s work in our homes, in
our communities, in our workplaces.
Let’s open our hearts to hear what it is that He will give us to do this
week.
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