“In the day of trouble, God will give me shelter.” Psalm 27:5
Dear Redeemer Family:
As I write this, there is snow on the ground, and it is 10 degrees outside. We are just getting through our latest winter storm. The idea of shelter has been on many peoples’ minds the last few days. The arctic air that we have received has been brutal. On the other hand, the snow has definitely brightened up the outside world. And, remember, the days are in fact getting longer, a little bit each day. Translation: there is hope for a better tomorrow!
We are mortals. We are tied to Creation. And so, we go through cycles. Too often we think of these only in terms of the calendar and the seasons. But there are other cycles which we all go through as well. For example, there is a daily cycle. To put it very simply, we sleep. We get up. We eat. We do some work. We eat. We go back to sleep. We start over. How is that for a description of our lives? But basically, very basically, that is it for most people. It is so routine that we don’t even think about it. But what happens when our routine is changed. When something unexpected occurs. I can remember times when I didn’t eat for a couple of days, nor sleep. At the end of it, I was a walking zombie, and just wanted to get back to my routine. Or think about our health. That is another thing that people far too often take for granted. That is until they get sick. Then all they want to do is get healthy and go about their daily routines. I can basically tell how long a person has been in the hospital just by seeing how they are when I go in to visit them. Let’s put it this way, the tension mounts. They just want to go home and get on with their lives.
The Church Calendar is another cycle which affects us. Recently, we celebrated Christmas. We worked ourselves hard to prepare for it (that is called Advent), we celebrated, and the basked in its joy. Then we rested and are now enjoying the beauty of God’s light (we call that Epiphany). And we know that soon, we will enter into another time of preparation as we get ready for Easter. That time of preparation is Lent. And we will enter it early in the month of March. It is a time of preparing for the most important celebration of our faith, Easter, the Resurrection. But it is also a time of self-reflection upon our own lives and faith. It is a time when we can contemplate the times of trouble in our lives and faith. We can strive to find ways to make ourselves better. It is a time when we can draw closer to God in our faith. And it is a time when we can realize that we already shelter in God’s love, every day, through our many life’s cycles. And we live our lives in the shelter of Jesus’ cross.
In Christ,
Pastor Rose