Day 5 February 22 Psalm 42:2 My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When can I go and meet with God?
She was found on the floor at the bottom of the stairs. This very senior woman who knew the Lord looked into her son-in-law’s eyes. He was a medical doctor. “No, mom,” he said to her. “It isn’t time yet.”
This woman was my grandmother and I can say in the blessed years I knew her that her soul did thirst for God, especially in the end.
In waiting for God, it sounds like our psalmist writes with impatience, perhaps even frustration. We’ve all experienced impatience and frustration. We’ve all been talked out of it, too. Our perspective or our outlook may not have changed our circumstances but our outlook on them. A help here is the writer’s emphasis on the living God. The God of action. The God in the now. Rather than waiting on God, let’s realize God is already here, already with us.
TRY IT: Stop. Think. The stopping part may be the harder of the two if you’re really frustrated! But do it. Stop. Think. God is with me now.
PRAYER: God, chill me from the heat of the moment, from the hurt of this hard life around me. I can meet You now, at least in part, and I’m going to take this time to do just that. Amen.
Day 4/ February 20 Isaiah 58:6 “No, this is the kind of fasting I want: Free those who are wrongly imprisoned; lighten the burden of those who work for you. Let the oppressed go free, and remove the chains that bind people.
We’re not the only ones who may think fasting is a self-regulated, self-sacrificing practice. This prophet is speaking to a culture that, like many of us today, think fasting is something taken away, not added onto.
Do you hear the question in the back of your head, “What did you give up for Lent?”
Maybe we should hear this prophet’s words instead. His call to action is clear. Don’t give something up. Take something on.
One of the best missionary people I know gets this. She says, “The arm of the church is its missions.”
The pulse of the church is not the preacher, the silences, the sanctuary. No, the pulse of the church is the productivity in getting done what needs to get done. Missions? Yes, a team approach works! Spur of the moment care also gets it done, too.
TRY IT: Roll up your sleeves. Get involved. Literally and metaphorically, free those wrongly imprisoned. Lighten someone’s load. Remove chains that bind people.
PRAYER: Lord, we need our quiet moments, prayerful time. After this, help us realize the time to rally is now. The time to move is now. The time to go and do is now.