Thursday, March 21, 2013

Freshly Fallen Spring Snow

As I write this in the first few days of the Lenten equinox, words come to mind at the sight of the ground before me…. oh so slidingly slow for freshly fallen spring snow….

 
 


 
 

The thought of slipping on by smoothly across the surface from one season of transition to another conjures up images of uncertainty over potential pitfalls along the path forward on the journey in the way of faith. It really is for me in my experience a pilgrimage calling for ever increasing trust in the Lord our God in the face of seemingly impossibly difficult situations. To prayerfully entrust one another on this road of witnessing God's great faithfulness and goodness toward us as children of the Lord is a wonder for us to behold and is precisely what we are called to in these latter days, and unwaveringly so.

 
 

As we approach the most holy of holy weeks in our tradition of worship through millennia of Christian practice, particularly from our reformed heritage, I am personally challenged and comforted at the same time by sovereign grace manifested in the passion of the Christ. To reimagine, if we would or could, what Jesus the Holy and Anointed One must have been going through and how Christ the Lord was feeling at the time of the week preceding his crucifixion is in a sense beyond the pale. The myriad onslaught of emotions in moments of utter desperation experienced in the midst of the Christ event must for some have been overly overwhelming.

 
 

And yet, even as I continue writing and riding on, the brightly enlightening rays of the sun are shining through whatever grey clouds there may appear to be in the skies of cumulus soaring in the upper stratus above. A so-called silver lining may yet present itself in the process of the enduring pilgrim's progress toward the golden glory of the eternal realms.

 
 

The apostle Paul puts it in this way in the letter of love to the saints in Corinth.

 
 

And all of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord, the Spirit.

2 Corinthians 3:18 (NRSV)

 
 

With every trial and tribulation traversed in transition, the traveler whose triumph is totaled in the way, the truth, the resurrection and the life is continually transformed as led by the Spirit of Christ Jesus the Lord our God.

 
 

May this be the blessed experience of the holy in our midst who are deeply loved in Christ, always and forever

 
 

In God's grace and peace,

Pastor Rex