Hope deferred makes the heart sick,
but a desire fulfilled is a tree of life. (Prov. 13:12)
A friend shared this verse with me recently, in response to my fears and weariness regarding our housing situation and the process of learning Kazakh. It was the first part of the verse that hit home with me initially—it was a true diagnosis of my heart. But now I am struck even more by the second part of the verse: “A desire fulfilled is a tree of life.” We know who the Tree of Life is, and He has even called us to abide in him as his branches (Jn. 15:5)! We know—or ought to know—where to go when hope is deferred, when we have unfulfilled desires. And yet we so easily forget. We even hesitate to allow him, his presence with us, to be the fulfillment of our desire. After all, we truly feel the need of whatever it is we are desiring—a stable, rooted home; success in our endeavors; clarity for the future. Do we trust our Father to remember what we need if we rest in him and stop grumbling to him? Can we, with Jesus, sleep in the boat in the middle of the storm (Matt. 8:24)?
Over the last few weeks, the Lord has used a line from the Ash Wednesday litany to convict me particularly of this lack of trust:
For our self-pity and impatience, and our envy of those we think more fortunate than ourselves;
Lord have mercy upon us: For we have sinned against you.
Our family is listening to Bach’s oratorio of Saint Matthew’s Passion for the first time this Lent. Bach set to music passages from the Last Supper to the resurrection, along with prayerful reflections on what is happening. The oratorio opens with a chorus:
Come, you daughters, help me wail!
Look! Whom? The Bridegroom.
Look at him! How? He’s like a lamb!
Look! What? See his patience.
Look! Where? At our guilt.
See him, in love and grace
He’s carrying the wooden cross himself!
“Look! What? See his patience.” The Lord used this line to give me a charge as we wait for Easter this year, which for our family is also a time of waiting for the provision of a long-term home here in Kazakhstan and anxiously anticipating language evaluations, where Asher and I will find out the results of the study we’ve put in over the last two and a half years. Impatience is a strong temptation, even though there’s clearly no hope there. Impatience with the housing process leads me to despair, to believing we will never be settled. Impatience with language learning also leads to despair—I’d rather quit and not sit for the evaluation than hear that I’ve learned as little as I feel I have. But where I would in my own nature fight the temptation to impatience by working hard to drum up patience and trust, the Lord has given me this charge: look at Jesus, see his patience.
When Jesus told the parable of the fig tree in the reading from Luke 13 this past Sunday, he told it differently than he does his other parables. He left us hanging—what happened? Did the fig tree bear fruit? Did the vinedresser see fruit from his patience and care? And when Jesus healed the bent woman, he also went about her healing differently than he did with others. He saw her, he called her over, he spoke words of release and healing, he laid his hands on her. She was as unable to affect her own healing or even to ask for it as the fig tree was to bear fruit. But she responds: she comes to Jesus when he calls her, she hears his voice, she does not shrink from his touch, and she receives the healing offered—she is made straight, and glorifies God! You and I are also bent and in bondage, but perhaps we don’t see the particular sin or disability the Lord would heal us from, or we may be too weary and sick at heart to hope for healing. Do you hear Jesus calling you? Go to him in prayer, in his Word, and in his Church, and receive the sacraments of grace. He will speak peace and healing, he will lay his hands on you, and you will be made straight.
Hannah
Ask the Church!
We have been toying with this idea for a while, and at staff meeting this morning, it was decided that it is time to get started.
In the near future, we are going to start including a short (1-5 minute) video in the newsletter each week that answers the strange, odd, and interesting questions that you have about the church.
Regarding the questions:
We want these videos to answer questions you actually have. In a certain sense, anything about the church, Christian theology, our worship, the Bible, etc. is fair game. Realistically, not everything can be addressed in 1-5 minutes, and so some questions will have to be set aside. But I am certain that many of you have had questions pop into mind during worship (or at other random times), and this is your chance to ask them. Simply email the questions to Steven!
We will create a short video on our YouTube page and link it to our newsletter. Your question will likely help others and hopefully spur other questions. The end goal, of course, is deeper understanding and appreciation for what we do, both as part of the Church Universal and as members of a local church. As we begin to populate the YouTube page, feel free to share it with others who might be interested in various aspects of our worship, discipleship, or church life. These are for public consumption, and might be a helpful way to introduce people to the church.
We won’t start putting these videos in the newsletter until we have received a sufficient number of questions, because we know that there will be “dry spells” when no questions come in. We need to fill the reservoir, so that we can get started without worrying about running out of questions.
To that end, email me your questions!
In Christ,
Steven+
An Introduction to Ash Wednesday and Lent
Ash Wednesday is the first day of Lent, the 40-day period of preparation for Easter. From very early on the church believed that it was important to prepare for the celebration of the resurrection through fasting, penitence, prayer, reading Scripture, and gifts to the poor. It might strike you as odd that that the early church felt that we need to prepare for Easter for 40 days, and it might strike you as odd that preparation for the celebration doesn’t mean cleaning and decorating the home or buying the ingredients for the big meal. Fasting, alms-giving, penitence, Scripture reading, and prayer are strange sorts of preparation!
It is odd, because our culture doesn’t do this sort of thing. We aren’t particularly patient; we tend to think in minutes and hours rather than weeks and months. 40 days of preparation for a church service feels a bit strange to us! But the ancient church believed that the great feasts of the church—Easter and Christmas—were something to prepare for, and preparation was a movement of the soul over a long period of time. The early Christians saw this pattern all over the Bible. Noah underwent a period of waiting on the ark as the rain fell for 40 days before he came out and encountered God. Moses waited in Midian for 40 years before he met God and returned to Egypt to free his people. He fasted on Sinai for 40 days before he received the Law from God and saw God himself. The Israelites waited in the desert for 40 years before entering the promised land. Elijah fasted for 40 days before he encountered God at Mount Horeb. Jesus fasted for 40 days before beginning his ministry of salvation.
The early church rightly taught that preparing for an encounter with God or for a new season of ministry was the Biblical pattern. According to the Bible, the best way to prepare was to pray, to fast from things that distract us, to pay particular attention to confession and repentance, to increase our devotion to the Scriptures and worship, and to give to the needy.
We need to “mortify” ourselves; that is, we need to put to death our desires through fasting and confession, so that we will be prepared to meet God in the celebration of the resurrection of the Son. We don’t earn anything by doing this. God doesn’t love us more if we keep a rigorous fast. Fasting can make people self-righteous if they think it gives them favor with God or makes them better than others. We fast, very simply, because we need it: we are distracted, weighed down by the world, weighed down by our fleshly desires. We need to be purged so that we can see God clearly, and Lent is the great period of preparation and purging, of mortification and prayer, while we wait to celebrate the resurrection again. I once heard someone say, “If you are driving through the mountains with mud on the windshield, taking the mud off doesn’t make you more in the mountains. But it sure helps you see them more clearly!” Fasting doesn’t earn our place with God, but it can help us see him!
Ash Wednesday is the first day of Lent. Tonight, you will be reminded of your mortality, reminded of your sinfulness, and called to confession, prayer, and fasting. But you are being called to fasting so that you might be ready to rejoice again in the resurrection. Our hope is not in our fasting or spiritual disciplines. Thankfully, Lent does not last forever! Our hope is in the fact that the Son of God became man, died on our behalf, and conquered Hell, Satan, and death by rising again from the dead. He is now at the right hand of the Father, interceding for us, and by his Spirit we can enter the very presence of the Father in heaven with him. This is our hope!
Steven+