Lenten Devotional #5: Godliness

Psalm of my Cross

                  Fr. Ed Hays

With wisdom deeper than the oceans, you have fashioned with great love

                  a special cross for each of us.

May my Lenten gift this year be to more clearly see

                  my cross as a Jacob’s ladder, rising to you

                  out of my painful, troubled sea.

I place my hand with trust, into the hand of my Gethsemani Guide,

                  so that I might joyfully embrace everything that I would

                  gladly prefer to discard as disgrace

                  everything that makes up my cross,

                  my way to you, Beloved God.

Open my heart this day that I may see with eyes of truth

                  whether the painful cross I bear as mine,

                  claiming it as holy burden,

                  does indeed come from you, my God –

                  or if by chance my cross is one of my own creation.

Teach me this day not to carry my cross

                  but rather the Jacob’s ladder of your will.

Guide me as I seek with all my heart

                  to climb it daily as a sacred spiral staircase,

                  spiraling in sacrificial splendor,

                  winding ever wider, ever higher, opening me more and more

                  to Your wisdom and will, to becoming one in You.

Submitted by Pat Russell

Lenten Devotional #4: Godliness

By Pat Russell

Today I went into Mother’s room to help her get going.  She slept in today (that means she woke up at 6:30 instead of 5:00).  She was disturbed.  Could not get her brain working; was confused and distraught.  Yesterday she had to go the emergency room for a nose bleed that would not quit.  At 94, things like that throw a person off in a big way – “disorientation” as Pastor Bruce says.

No matter how it happens, no matter at what age, we enter into these disorienting times often through no fault of our own.  Our bodies wear out; our minds get confused; our spirits flag.  I ask how is it that my mother who has lived her life focused on Jesus can still have to go through these times.  Shouldn’t she be able to rest in the peace that she has learned so much about over the years?  Sometimes she can, but then at other times, life is simply too much.

At this point in life, Mother has persevered through the aging process, through the death of her husband, through leaving her home that she and my dad built over many years, through a community of people around her to a more isolated existence, through her children loving her but not with her every minute.  Is she moving into godliness?  “Godliness,” as Pastor Bruce said, “is standing in awe of God; focused attention on God and not so much yourself.”

This is what my mother tells me about godliness:  First of all, she would NEVER think she was becoming more godly – oh no.  In fact, she prays that God will help her be who she needs to be so that she won’t inconvenience us.  She wakes up early to spend about an hour and a half praying for people and reading the Word.  When she reads Scripture she says that it is more real to her every time.  Jesus is alive!  For some reason, He is more alive now for her than ever in her life.  Of course her failing memory allows the freshness of Scripture to come through, but it is something MORE.  Her eyes light up when she talks about the fact that Jesus is here now.

This morning she was struggling to get her mind settled and she said to me, “Did we pray?  Let’s pray.”  So we began that prayer that the Lord taught us.  “Our Father who art in heaven….”  When we said “Give us this day our daily bread,” she stopped and started thanking God for who He is.  She just moaned her prayer at times.  And then, at the end of the “official” prayer, she simply started thanking the Lord for dying on the cross for her, for being “dead for a little while” so that He could be with us now.

Well, I will let you think about what it means to persevere into godliness as it relates to my mom’s life -- and to yours.   I know what I have seen in these past couple days.  Blessings THIS day, Pat

Lenten Devotional #3: Perseverance

By Pat Russell

Do you ever sit in the Sunday service listening to Pastor Bruce wanting to say, “Wait a minute!  Can we just stop here and talk about this a bit more?” Often a word or phrase that Pastor Bruce speaks will lodge in my heart and I have to do some more pondering on it. This, I believe is the Spirit speaking to my life.

It happened this past Sunday once again. When Pastor Bruce read and talked about the phrases in Scripture that encouraged joy in suffering, I wanted to have a discussion:  “…but we also REJOICE IN our sufferings because we know that suffering produces perseverance…”  (Paul).  “…whenever you face trials of any kind, consider it NOTHING BUT JOY, because you know that the testing of your faith produces endurance…” (James).

Sad to say, I have become a “glass half empty” person in the last 10 years of my life.  So many things have gone wrong health-wise and dream-wise and relationship-wise that I look around at life and get grumpy not joyful. Yesterday was one of those days – a storm hit my life.  I received notice from the radiologist that I have an issue to follow up after my mammogram.  I have faced this before and it led to a mastectomy and chemotherapy.  Natural response – grumpy – anger, if I am truthful.  Here is what I wrote in my journal this morning:

The voices that come up inside me are saying, "Why me again?  You must have my life tagged for illness – thanks a lot. I will not on this earth ever be set free to pursue the dreams I have. Waiting again…what if I have cancer? I don’t want to go through treatment again. I must have done this to myself somehow.’” 

Not good voices, are they? They are NOT the voice of God. His voice is encouraging and non-accusatory.  But I have developed a not-so-good habit of “glass half full,” so these are the voices that come.  It is good for me to put them out there in my journal so that I can see them for what they really are.

You can understand why the Holy Spirit drew me with a wooing voice into consideration of Pastor Bruce’s words this past Sunday. As I dwelled on those readings in Scripture and his words concerning them, I contemplated what they mean for me TODAY. I am not really happy about this possible health issue, but I do want to develop perseverance in my life. That means that in the midst of going through this, I have an opportunity to change my habit of suspicion about life into a habit of joy. “Joy – a pervasive and firmly established sense of well being.” (Dallas Willard).  I surely do need this. Jesus is with me in this desire.  He wants me to participate in the divine nature (Peter), in the fellowship of the Trinity.

Yesterday after getting this news, I went to hang out with the participants at an adult day care center where I volunteer. One of the young ladies who is developmentally delayed kept coming up to me and kissing my head and hugging me and rubbing my shoulders. This was unusual for her. She was like the woman who anointed Jesus’ feet with oil and wiped them with her hair. She did that for me. She was Jesus coming to me in all of my disappointment and fear and saying, “I love you, and if you can always, as it were, feel My pulse beat, you will receive insight that will give you sustaining strength (perseverance).  I bore your sins and I wish to carry your burdens.  You may take the gift of a light and merry heart, for My love dispels all fear and is a cure for every ill…” (Song of Solomon 2 – Come Away My Beloved by Frances Roberts).

So TODAY, today I choose to develop a new habit of how I regard life. It is actually a habit I knew well as a child. May we all become as little children held in the loving arms of our Father.