Light and Ashes

Many Christians will attend worship tomorrow for Ash Wednesday, the beginning of the season of Lent. Some will receive ashes on their forehead and hear the immortal words from Genesis 3, “Remember you are dust and to dust you shall return.”

This is a time to reflect on our current state. We are mortal…we are sinful…we are proud…and hopefully, amidst the ashes and darkness, we can hear another word – we are forgiven. I can speculate on some things, and one thing I believe is that many people today, looking at Christianity from the outside, get it wrong. Why? Well, perhaps because our loudest and most energetic words have to do with morality. Instead of hearing Good News in Christ we communicate self-righteousness.

Philip Yancey once said: "The only difference that I can tell between Christians and non-Christians is not necessarily morality; it’s that Christians have acknowledged that we’re sinners and we can’t make it on our own." Ash Wednesday reminds us that we can’t make it on our own. God has provided us a way, through our Lord Jesus Christ to be righteous in Him…not because of our own efforts. 

Picture number one is my to labs doing what they do best, relaxing in the sun. Picture two was taken recently...I had just finished refinishing the hardwood floors in our front room, left for a moment and returned to see Cleo calmly basking in the sun. I believe this was her stamp of approval on my work (this is about as much praise you will ever get from a cat). These pictures remind me of how the light of Christ breaks the darkness of the human stain. On Ash Wednesday we stand before God with no illusions about our perfection or self-sufficiency. But hear the Good News…God doesn’t expect us to be. His light, the light of Christ is proof of that. 

The Blessed Road Less Traveled

I would like to take a quick look at a word that people use all the time (Christians and non-Christians). That is the word blessing. Now, most people have no issue with the word in itself, and most often use it to describe things conducive to happiness and welfare. I received a raise, "What a blessing."  I have a wonderful family, I am so blessed. I am blessed to be able to fish all weekend. You get the point. Now, I don't mean to demean this definition of blessing, because even scripture uses happiness and blessedness synonymously in some instances. But to fully understand scripture's use of blessed, we must take a different road. 

The ‘blessed road less traveled' teaches that a blessing is anything that drives us closer to God and strengthens our faith in Christ. Christ didn't say, "Blessed are the rich," (even non-Christians laugh at this notion), but, "Blessed are the Poor in Spirit." Now, as many commentators agree, the poor in spirit include the dispossessed and abandoned people in our midst but contains a larger audience, generally referring to individuals who realize that they have nothing to offer God in the form of spiritual requirements to achieve righteousness.

Namely, that we don't deserve God's grace and we can't earn it. When you read through the beatitudes in Matthew 5 you realize that the blessings of Jesus are given at the beginning of the sermon and are given to those who have done nothing to deserve them. Can God be found in prosperity and ‘earthly' blessings? I don't know – I'll let you know if we meet in heaven.

I do know however that I don't desire pain for you or for myself (and I really want to stress that I don't want any more pain than I currently have). However…as my Grandfather used to say, "Life ain't about what you want." We don't seek out pain, but maybe the blessings we are missing (namely the connection to Christ) are because we have taken great efforts to equate all blessing (from God and man) with earthly happiness and to avoid pain and suffering at all costs.

The Problem of Pain, C.S. Lewis

This month our congregation is walking through C.S. Lewis' book, "The Problem of Pain." The premise of the book is stated in the beginning, It's unsettling, but he writes, "pain would be no problem unless, side by side with our daily experience of this painful world, we had received what we think a good assurance that ultimate reality is righteous and loving.”

There it is. If we have no room for a good and righteous God... then the question of theodicy is not an issue. Without God, life (including the beginning of life) is random, unforgiving and a result of luck or fate or whatever your metaphysical make-up is constructed of. 

However, for those who believe (or want to believe) in a good and loving God in spite of the darkness this world so often throws at us, this resource is a good weapon to have in your arsenal. 

As with anything worth having, there are some hard questions to ask. Who is to be blamed for sin? How did we become a horror to God and to our neighbor? Is it ok, in an evil age to be evil? I will write more about this later.