“It’s All Relative”

This past week I was able to go back to North Dakota with Suzanne, my daughter, and her boyfriend to see my Mom and Dad. Stepping off the plane in Bismarck, the temperature was 15 degrees with a 30 mph wind. In other words it was COLD. What made it better was that this was Nick’s (the boyfriend) first experience with real cold, having grown up in Lake Havasu City where we know the heat goes to 120 plus.

 

True to form, we arrived and then the next day the wind stopped and the temperature climbed to a whopping 20 degrees and yes the words came out of Nick’s mouth, “This is not too bad.” Just 48 hours earlier, while being in Arizona, enjoying the fine weather, a statement like this would never have happened. What changed was the experience.

 

We hear every week in church that we are forgiven, that we are loved, and that God gives us grace, mercy, and hope. He does all of these things ALL THE TIME. It was because of the caring of his creation that he sent his Son. Until we have experienced in our own lives one or all of these, it becomes a theoretical exercise. Yet we need to be careful about looking for or directing the experience. “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.”

 

The month of February marks the beginning of our Annual Lenten Journey. We have traveled this path before. We know the order. We know we are “contemplative” during the season. We know that we will shout Hosanna on April 1^st. We know that Maundy Thursday will be recognition of that supper that the disciples did not know was to be the “last” supper. We will look to the cross as death, finality, and sacrifice for us. Finally, on Easter morning we will celebrate “He is Risen”. We can go through the motions.

 

The more I live this life. The more I have come to know that God has a way of getting his way. We can seemingly go through the motions. Our lives can be going on as we intended them filled with plans that we have made. Then something will happen, something will be said, something will be experienced that brings us right back to all of these words that we have heard all of our lives. In so doing they become REAL. Jesus came and walked right up to Thomas and said, “Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe.” Even as we gather perhaps the song that is sung with the most feeling isn’t the grandiose hymn, but the simple “Jesus Loves Me”.

 

This Lenten season, you do know the story and the order of what is to come. But the invitation is always there to came and share in the presence of God, because you never know what experience might touch and change you.