Lent Day 20/ March 11 Psalm 37:4 reads, “Delight yourself in the LORD, and he will give you the desires of your heart.”
This verse is not in reverse!
When we consider this text, a two-part action appears: first, we are to delight in God; second, God gives us the desires of our hearts.
Ah, who DOESN’T want delights and desires! In fact, when we look at the root of the majority of our conversations, we find we are consumed by delights and desires, or the lack thereof. From our micro to our macro decisions, we spend so much of our time and energy in the pursuit of comforting ourselves, trying to comfort ourselves again, or lamenting that we have so little comfort at all.
The verse does not read, “Go get the desires of your heart, and, if, by the way, you happen to have some extra time, you might want to delight yourself in the LORD.” This alignment, this order, is important for us to find delight because we realize our delight—our truest joys—are found not in our ourselves, but in our service to God.
David aligns each word in this verse just like any beloved senior who has spent decades with the LORD would do. Experience speaks here. The importance of this sequence is, in itself, a gift.
TRY IT: Find delight in God. Meditate on His word. Sing songs of praise. Repeat, repeat and repeat! Then, without knowing exactly WHEN it happens, the desires of your heart—and the desires of God’s heart—are exactly the same.
PRAYER: LORD, help us again and again to find delight in You. This is our desire. Amen.
Lent Day 21/ March 12 Isaiah 6:8 says, “Then I heard the voice of the Lord asking: Who should I send? Who will go for us? I said, ‘Here I am. Send me.’”
The prayer, “Send me!” isn’t often spoken often using these exact words. This prayer IS prayed a great deal, however; we just phrase it differently. When we walk into a room and a difficult situation (and every parent everywhere has walked into a room and a difficult situation), we pray this prayer. Beyond parenthood, everyone who has ever loved someone has prayed this prayer.
“Send me!” may not exactly pop into our heads or silently roll off our tongues specifically, but with hands wringing and hearts thumping, we do pray to be sent in. We pray to be used. We pray to intervene not in our way but in God’s. As tough as it is, as awful as it can be, or as tear-jerking as it may be, yes, we are praying that prayer. We will go. Send us.
We won’t go in alone. We won’t go in with our agenda. We won’t go in insisting on our way. No, the situation is too troublesome for that, too heart wrenching for that, too volatile for that. Again, we may never use those words but do go in with sure or with shaky steps in the company of God surrounding us, guiding us, speaking through us, and, at times, shutting us up from saying what we should not say.
You’ve been called in, and the voice of the Lord is the one asking you to go. This, too, may not be something you realize, or not realize in the moment. But God is God, and God knows you’re just the one with just the right inflection and just the right temperament and just the right heart to make the difference—to be the difference—in a scene that really could go one way or the other.
TRY IT: Actually pray, “Here I am, Lord. Send me.”
PRAYER: Lord, send me. Scared as I may be. Ill-equipped as I may be. Lopsided, gauche, bewildered, lost, or irreverent as I may be, yes, send me. Send me, Lord. Send me.
Lent Day 22/ March 13 Psalm 23:4 reads, “Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me.”
Death is one thing. The shadow of death is something else altogether. If we’ve been on the planet for a good number of spins around the sun, we know what the shadow of death is. Death is expected, at least somewhat. It can even bring comfort, at least on one level. The shadow of death, however, now this is raw. This is mean. Ugly things surround it even as the best of family and friends lift us because there are moments when, especially at first, we literally cannot stand at all.
Not fearing evil is one huge step to knocking grief to operational levels. And evil? This is real. In fact, the Bible is very clear on a real God, real angels, and a real devil (Satan). Though this evil does not have equal power to God by any means because this power has been mortally wounded at Christ’s cross, we remain in spiritual warfare. Not fearing evil when we are wounded in the heart? This is always a win.
The imagery of the rod and staff, which we can see as an Old Testament window into our New Testament Jesus, is truly a comfort. Both Penn Northeast Conference Minister Bonnie Bates and I both agreed during a recent conversation that we find abiding hope with a single word in this familiar funeral passage. The word is ‘through.’
We go through the valley of death. We are not consumed by its awfulness. We see it, experience it full on, but don’t stay in death.
The rod and staff comfort yet grief still lingers. Loss still hurts. With such a deeper love for the One who conquered death for all, however, we listen for and follow this Shepherd, this only Son of God. In doing so, we do get through the valley.
TRY IT: Okay, true, no one welcomes or wants to try it, but consider what you already know: grief can be a twisting, knotting mess with one light at the end of the tunnel. This light is Jesus. Death’s stings and slaps may happen, yes; the enemy is busy; but, like that Red Sea, we get through this. The Promised Land of heaven awaits.
PRAYER: Remind us, Jesus, that when we can’t speak because the shadow of death has taken nearly all of us, including our voices, that we merely have to think of Your name and it’s true, we do get through the valley of death. Amen.