Wednesday, February 26, 2020 – Ash Wednesday
“The Spirit of God, the Master, is on me because God anointed me. He sent me to preach good news to the poor, heal the heartbroken, announce freedom to all captives, pardon all prisoners. God sent me to announce the year of his grace— a celebration of God’s destruction of our enemies— and to comfort all who mourn, to care for the needs of all who mourn in Zion, give them bouquets of roses instead of ashes, messages of joy instead of news of doom, a praising heart instead of a languid spirit.” (Isaiah 61:3 -7, The Message Bible)


                There has always been a spiritual part of me which has believed that our Baptist tradition would be well served by the proper or appropriate observance of the whole Lenten season, beginning with Ash Wednesday.

                I always tried to have an Ash Wednesday service  in my churches and by and large, except for a faithful few, they were greeted with a rather tepid indifference. Few saw the purpose or understood the need for Lent or Ash Wednesday. Indeed, it is easy to ignore in Baptist circles, something for Anglicans or Catholics. Easter Resurrection is where it is at – who needs all this sombre, existential angst of repentance, sacrifice, and remorse? Of course, Lent is far more than that gloomy picture but there are those who do not see the relevance of the Lenten season.

                I can remember one of my senior men in my church in Ottawa complaining to me about the prayers of confession which I would bring into the Lenten Sunday worship services. He told me that these prayers weren’t necessary and had nothing to do with him; he didn’t feel the need to confess anything. Which begs the question about him…

                I enjoyed(?)  the challenge of inviting my folk into self-reflection, self-honesty, to renew their personal desire for their own spiritual quest, of personal exploration which would challenge them to know Christ more deeply and love God more eagerly.

                And sometimes, for sure, you have to sort through the ashes to get to the good stuff. I would invite people to write down some struggle, sin, challenge, habit, negative thought, etc. on a piece of paper. Sometimes, then we would burn these pieces of paper in a large vessel, symbolically turning their tough life-issues into ash in the light of God’s consuming Love and Grace. One time, we pinned the pieces of paper to an old rugged cross, recognizing that Jesus’ crucifixion plays a critical role in our forgiveness and experiencing God’s forgiveness.

                Lent can be cleansing, liberating, cathartic, purifying, uplifting and redemptive as we walk with Jesus through his Passion, his Death, his Burial and eventually his Resurrection. I don’t think one should skip right to Easter Sunday without the pilgrimage through all else which precedes it. Like the Phoenix which rises from its ashes, so we, too, rise with Christ from the Ashes of  our Lenten experiences into New Life. Lent reminds us whose we are and whose we are not.

                “That means you must not give sin a vote in the way you conduct your lives. Don’t give it the time of day. Don’t even run little errands that are connected with that old way of life. Throw yourselves wholeheartedly and full-time—remember, you’ve been raised from the dead!—into God’s way of doing things. Sin can’t tell you how to live. After all, you’re not living under that old tyranny any longer. You’re living in the freedom of God.” (Romans 6: 12  - 14, The Message Bible)

                Lent leads us in the Way of Jesus so that sin can’t tell us how to live. The text from Isaiah is a celebration of ashes being turned into beauty and new life, messages of joy instead of news of doom, a praising heart instead of a languid spirit.

It also encapsulates the mission of Jesus whose death, cruel as it was, was the precursor to experiencing New Life, also. Sin and death, old Satan himself, never stood a chance!

“When we walk with the Lord/ In the Light of his word/ What a glory He sheds on our way!/ While we do his good will/ He abides with us still/ And with all who trust and obey.” (J.H. Sammis)

Dale

Wednesday, February 19, 2020
“She replied, “That’s true, Lord, but even the dogs under the table are allowed to eat the scraps from the children’s plates.” (Mark 7:28, New Living Translation) 

                It’s no picnic getting older. Just ask our two Aussie dogs.

                Both are in their thirteenth year – the beginnings of old age for a dog – and are showing signs that this aging process doesn’t totally agree with them. Both find it a little harder to get up from a nap or climb the stairs. Kramer is becoming somewhat hard of hearing and a little short of sight.

                But they both have decided to change their diets in their declining years. They want something a little easier to digest, more palatable, more interesting, more enticing. (Don’t we all?) Their old diet of dry kibble and just plain, ordinary canned dog food doesn’t quite cut it anymore. I am pretty sure that they talked this through between themselves and conspired together to go on a hunger strike unless there were serious changes.

Of course, it worked. We have upped our feeding regime to include new canned dog food which are tasty, meaty stews and are using a better, more expensive brand of kibble. Sometimes we even cook up ground chicken when they get really picky.

Charlie, the much smarter of the two, has raised the bar. He will only eat his supper if it is prepared in the following way. Put the stew meat on the bottom, occasionally add a scrambled egg, always sprinkle with shredded cheese and put a just a little kibble on top. Do not mix it together or he probably won’t deign to eat it. Small wonder one of the staff at our vet’s clinic called me “a good papa bear” when she heard this story.

Food security is a big thing. Just ask anyone who is hungry on a regular, daily basis.

The gentile woman who confronted Jesus was in need, not for herself but for her daughter who was deemed to have an “unclean spirit.” I am not really sure what that phrase might have meant in Jesus’ time  or what the young girl was experiencing but the mother’s fears and concerns were enough to break the taboos of Jewish culture which largely forbade Jewish males to have contact with gentiles and especially gentile women or anyone with diseases of any kind, physical or mental.

Somewhat uncharacteristically, Jesus rebuffs her, at first. He was still seeing his ministry within the confines of being primarily a Jewish mission, not yet a world-wide one. But once she has his undivided attention, she persists and though she may not be a privileged “chosen one”, even stray dogs may find scraps off their tables. Even she, she is insisting, may not be seemly in the eyes of those around her but she needs Jesus’ empathy, care, and compassion to make a difference for her and especially her daughter. Her words reach Jesus’ heart almost immediately and he cures her daughter on the spot.

I don’t know whether that encounter might have changed the way Jesus saw his ministry and mission. Certainly, we know that this wasn’t the only beneficial act which gentiles received. Even the much-hated Roman military officials were recipients of Jesus’ strength and power.  His Love was increasingly expansive and inclusive. His arms stretched a little wider for anyone who was hungry in a variety of ways. He was one good papa bear!

Sometimes, the old things in life don’t work as well as they used to. We become unhappy and unsettled. We cease to thrive. We feel hungry but nothing seems to appeal.  Our appetites change. Life is not satisfying.  We sense others get more out of life than we do. We measure ourselves by the prosperity and privilege of others. We reach out to God and beg that the Love and Grace of God might make a difference and bring a new reality into our meagre lives.

God can effect change for the good, for our betterment, for lifting us up to a new reality and fresh possibilities.  Anyone, even you and me, may ask Christ to influence and radically affect change in our old patterns and distorted characteristics that have left us discordant and broken.

“You’re blessed when you’ve worked up a good appetite for God. He’s food and drink in the best meal you’ll ever eat.” (Matthew 5: 6, The Message Bible)

Dale

Wednesday, February 12, 2020
“Understand this, my dear brothers and sisters: You must all be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to get angry.” (James 1:19, New Living Translation)  

                Another day, another donkey.

                This time, I am reading the exquisitely written book, The Wisdom of Donkeys, by Andy Merrifield. It chronicles his leisurely-paced, multi-day journey by foot through the Haute-Auvergne region in southern France. His companion is a pack donkey by the name of Gribouille. The subtitle of the book is “finding tranquility in a chaotic world.” He is fascinated by the behaviour, the character, the spirit and the soul of his donkey and the lessons it taught him along the way about how to react to the messy world in which we live.

                One piece of those lessons is that “time slows down amid donkeys.” A person has to walk at the pace the donkeys set. It does little good to prod or try to hurry along a donkey. A donkey seems to walk  slowly so as to absorb the world he is experiencing in the moment and will not be rushed.

                He wrote: “If only we could slow down! The rush of contemporary life overwhelms our ability to observe, to hear, to step back and wonder, to meditate.”

                So many of us are in a rush. We honk at the slow driver ahead of us. We tap our toes impatiently when waiting for customer service. We want our fast food and we want it now. We are so busy, no time to stop. We have so much to do, and it needs to have been done yesterday!  Kids are in a rush to grow up. Couples are in a rush to have their family. People are in a rush to get to the top of their careers and vocations. Some can’t wait to retire.

                A donkey expert had told Merrifield that he would have to enter a donkey’s way of doing things. “You can’t make a donkey walk faster; you can’t do things any faster with a donkey. We have to learn to go at its pace.”

                Sometimes, I am  re-discovering a better, richer, more deliberate pace in my retirement. It isn’t easy. I have spent most of my life, it seems, “on the-run”, extremely task-oriented, ready and eager for the next thing, impatient with myself and with others. It hasn’t been easy to stop and smell the roses. But there are more times now  that I will take a deep breath and take in what is transpiring around me and intentionally enjoy the moment, and consciously become aware of the significance of what is happening – the giggle of a grandchild, a conversation with Susan, the silliness of one of the dogs, a song on the radio, a good book, a crossword puzzle, sitting by a lake and watching a sunset. Breathe in, breathe out. Life is short enough; I really don’t need to race through it. Tranquility is a wonderful gift, even if elusive at times.

                “Things work differently with a donkey on a dirt trail…,” wrote Merrifield. “It’s the gift of relishing the rhythm of precise steps, of treading slower yet going farther, of reassuring the present moment, making it endure longer, stretching it out in all its glorious fullness.”

                Our text above reminds us there is a poignant merit in a slowness to express such things as anger, insults, tweeting things that diminish and belittle others, rushing to judgment, adding more chaos to our world and the lives of others in the process. The writer was probably inspired by the several OT texts which avow that God is a God “a God of compassion and mercy, slow to get angry and filled with unfailing love and faithfulness.” (Psalm 86:15, NLT)

Let our moments in which we love, care, help, share steep slowly and long in the ways we live and interact with others.

“You body language needs to slowed down with a donkey. You need to move like you’re walking through waist-deep water, with steady, not jerky movements. A careful, slower body language reassures a donkey, lets him gain confidence in you: small slow steps towards trust.”

                Small, slow steps to Love.
Dale

Wednesday, February 5, 2020
“You should clothe yourselves instead with the beauty that comes from within, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is so precious to God.” (1 Peter 3:4, New Living Translation)


                The old saying goes “clothes make the man,” or in this case, clothes make the baby.

                Recently, we received photos of our three newest grandchildren all wearing clothes given to them by us, their grandparents. On the same day, no less. The moms didn’t plan that way, but they all went on to express their appreciation for us as grandparents.

                There is nothing that Susan enjoys more than buying clothes for our grandkids. Now that she has two granddaughters, look out!

                A baby is going to look adorable in just about anything, even just a diaper. But clothe them in clothes with polka dots or dinosaurs or onesies with funny sayings or frilly little dresses or little shirts decorated with sports equipment and it’s game-on for cuteness. Just ask any proud grandparent.

                Do they still do the best-dressed and worst-dressed celebrities of the year? (I don’t know and really don’t care; not even mildly curious.) It amuses me though to catch the headlines after some sort of award show like the Oscars or Emmys and how the fashion  critics fiercely  rate what the celebrities wore or tried to pull off as a wardrobe feature. Some of the clothes border on the outlandish and peculiar but if that is what the “star” chooses to wear out in public, who am I to judge?

                Give me babies any day of the year! Far superior! Nor do they really care what they are wearing or whether anybody else even notices. It is only going to have to be changed twenty minutes later anyway, after some “accident” warrants and demands a new set of duds. Talk about a wardrobe malfunction.

                I suppose clothes for adults, at least, tend to make a statement about self-image. Clothes can speak about a person’s poverty or prosperity.  Clothes can be an indicator of a person’s personality, whether, for example, a person has a flamboyant and creative streak or has a more conservative and conformist style.

Long gone are the days that many folk will bother to dress up in their Sunday-best to go to church. Even pastors have gone for the casual, folksy style from the pulpit. Remember back when women wore hats and white gloves? I remember at the end of my times as a pastor that it was not all that uncommon for some guests showing up at weddings only in T-shirts, shorts and sandals. Even the dress code for funerals is much more relaxed than it used to be.

I am not really pining for the old days of stuffy formality. We should not be judging people by what they wear, especially to church. I use to have some senior men get quite upset with young lads who wore their ball caps into the service and could be quite rude and therefore unwelcoming by telling them curtly to remove those hats.  I get it; I would prefer that they don’t wear their hats either in church but I’d much rather celebrate the fact that young people are in church and showing interest in Jesus. I’ll worry about the hats later, if at all.

The point is that clothes are not the end statement about who a person is or what is in their heart and spirit. Real beauty, unfading beauty, lasting beauty, as the text above indicates, comes from within a person’s soul and heart.

“So, chosen by God for this new life of love, dress in the wardrobe God picked out for you: compassion, kindness, humility, quiet strength, discipline. Be even-tempered, content with second place, quick to forgive an offense. Forgive as quickly and completely as the Master forgave you. And regardless of what else you put on, wear love. It’s your basic, all-purpose garment. Never be without it.” (Colossians 3:12, The Message Bible)

That ain’t none too shabby! 

Dale