“Why do you spend your money for that which does not satisfy,” God asked through Isaiah, “and  your labor for that which does not satisfy?” Maybe you do that because you’ve given up on attaining the things that do satisfy. Maybe you have abandoned the journey toward the life God promises you, settled down at the first likely oasis, and resigned yourself to living the rest of your life there instead of following your dream, your calling, to its promised land.

God’s message to you is: Never give up.

God’s thoughts, God’s ways, God’s timing is nothing at all like ours. As British Prime Minister Winston Churchill said in late 1941, after England had been through some of its darkest days of World War II, “You cannot tell from appearances how things will go. Never give in, never give in, never, never, never, never.” That’s God’s message to us, too. God has never given up on us. Don’t give up on God or on yourself.

Peace,
Pastor Rich

“My soul thirsts for you,” the psalmist cried to God; “my body craves you like a dry, weary land without water” (Ps. 63:1). Have you felt that way recently? What are you hungry for? What is the deep, deep desire in your life, the way-down-deep one inside every other desire, the persistent one that seems never to be satisfied? Maybe your craving for God is not a sign of God’s absence but an experience of God’s presence drawing you toward union with God. John Wesley called it “prevenient grace,” the grace of God at work in you long before you even recognize it as God’s work.

Your hunger for God may not at all be the result of an emptiness. It may be the sensation of God’s growing intimacy. It may be what God knows you need to secure your bond with the divine presence. The only way to satisfy that hunger is to give in to it, to surrender to the deepest hunger, the one only God can satisfy.

Be hungry.

Pastor Rich

On this first Sunday in Lent we recall the choices Jesus made in the wilderness, but we needn’t look so far into the past to know that kind of testing. We face it every day in the ordinary choices we make. Not so much the choices between good and bad, which are relatively easy ones, but the difficult, distressing, life- and soul-shaping choices between good and better, or between better and best. Those are the choices that test our quality, our commitment, our readiness to serve as agents of God’s will. Think of them not as choices to be avoided but as opportunities for blessing, as opportunities to live the life God promises and for which God has made us. Then look anew at the everyday choices you make.

Peace,
Pastor Rich

“In returning and rest you shall be saved,” the prophet wrote, and on Ash Wednesday we take up again the Lenten journey of return, not returning to a place far off but returning to a place near at hand that Jesus said is spread before us and that we fail to see. Don’t lose yourself in the world’s game, spending yourself for things that fail to nourish and laboring for things that in the end will never satisfy.

The beginning of Lent is not a finger-wagging shape-up-or-you’ll-be-sorry chastisement. It’s an invitation to listen, amid all the unsatisfying, distressing burdens of life, to another voice that offers an easy yoke and light burden, to seek the ancient way, the way that leads to green pastures and still waters. It’s an invitation to readjust your priorities, commitments, and burdens in a way that moves us from fatigue and frustration to deep, deep peace and fulfillment and to a wisdom such as the world cannot give. It’s an invitation to turn aside and rest, and in resting perhaps rediscover a way of life that can truly be called “eternal.”

Peace,
Pastor Rich