“For whatever reason God chose to make man as he is–limited and suffering and subject to sorrows and death–He had the honesty and the courage to take His own medicine. Whatever game He is playing with His creation, He has kept His own rules and played fair. He can exact nothing from man that He has not exacted from Himself. He has Himself gone through the whole of human experience, from the trivial irritations of family life and the cramping restrictions of hard work and lack of money to the worst horrors of pain and humiliation, defeat, despair and death. When He was a man, He played the man. He was born in poverty and died in disgrace and thought it well worthwhile.”–Dorthy Sayers

Before the universe began, from all eternity, Christ was in God. Since the birth of humanity, he has been a living Word. Then he dwelt among us on earth as a poor man. Risen from the dead, by the Holy Spirit he remains alongside each person.

 “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.”—John 1:14

Now that we know what we have—Jesus, this great High Priest with ready access to God—let’s not let it slip through our fingers. We don’t have a priest who is out of touch with our reality. He’s been through weakness and testing, experienced it all—all but the sin. So let’s walk right up to him and get what he is so ready to give. Take the mercy, accept the help. –Hebrews 4:16-17 (The MSG)

Jesus, we are thankful that you ‘walked in our shoes’ and you know our pain and struggles intimately through first hand experience.  Thank you that you are with us even now and forevermore. 

Constancy

We live in a time when we can look around us and see the dire thirst of the world around us.  We find ourselves in a world filled with many tempting waters said to satisfy any thirst. In Jeremiah it is said that the people had erred in two ways they had forsaken God, the living water, the source.  Secondly, they had built their own cisterns, ones that were faulty full of cracks and leaks.  Jesus once asked two men who were following him, “What do you want?” It is a question I believe he still bids us to answer. What is it you thirst for? What is your heart’s deepest desire? Is the world you have created to manufacture life and happiness working?  Are you in an unending cycle of grasping and clinging for life that is always seeping out of your grasp? 

 we read Jesus’ own words, that those who give themselves to him will receive a “living water,” the Spirit of God Himself, that will keep them from ever again being thirsty—being driven and ruled by unsatisfied desires—and that this “water” will become a well or spring of such water “gushing up to eternal life” (John 4:14).  Indeed it will even become “rivers of living water” flowing from the center of the believer’s life to a thirsty world (John 7:38).–Dallas Willard

Be still before the LORD and wait patiently for him-Psalm 37:7

“Be still, and know that I am God-Psalm 46:10

Many of us are so busy that we accomplish little of any real value.  We are so consumed by our many possessions that we never experience what it means to have much. Simplicity is God’s grand antidote to a culture of money and madness.  And properly understood and lived out, simplicity is God’s pruning shear, which cuts back the tangled branches of our lives, enabling us to begin living freely, sharing generously, and loving deeply. -unknown

The bread that you store up belongs to the hungry, the coat that lies in your chest belongs to the naked; the gold that you have hidden in the ground belongs to the poor.  -Saint Basil (329-379)  

Is this not the fast that I choose to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke?  Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover them, and not to hide your face from your own kin?  Then your light shall break forth like the dawn, and your healing shall spring up quickly; your vindicator shall go before you; the glory of the Lord shall be your rear guard.  -Isaiah 58:3

Lenten season is the time when we especially identify with the sufferings of Jesus.  During Lent we walk the way of the cross, we share in his rejection when the religious leaders and others turned from him, rejected him, and plotted his death.  Lent is a time for repentance and renewal, a time to fall at the feet of Jesus and admit our sinfulness and our need of him.  Lent is a time to confess, and cry “Lord have mercy on me, a sinner!”  Lent is a time for humility and repentance, a time to get on our knees and get right with God.
-Robert Weber  

Lord, wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.
Let me hear joy and gladness…
hide your face from my sins, and blot out all my iniquities, 
create in me a clean heart, O God,
and put a new and right spirit within me.
-Psalms 51:7b, 8a, 9-10

My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think that I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road though I may know nothing about it. Therefore will I trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone. – Thomas Merton

The Lord is my Shepherd Who guides me-Psalm 23

Our fathers disciplined us for a little while as they thought best;
but God disciplines us for our good,
that we may share in his holiness—Hebrews 12:10 

Because the LORD disciplines those he loves,
as a father the son he delights in.. –Proverbs 3:12

 “Blessed is the man whom God corrects;
       so do not despise the discipline of the Almighty. 
For he wounds, but he also binds up;
       he injures, but his hands also heal.—Job 5:17-18

Christianity with its doctrines of humility, of forgiveness, of love, is incompatible with the State, with its haughtiness, its violence, its punishment, its wars.-Leo Tolstoy 

Alexander, Caesar, Charlemagne, and I myself have founded empires, but upon what do these creations of our genius depend?  Upon force.  Jesus alone founded his empire upon love, and to this very day millions would die for him.-Napoleon Bonaparte 

The cross of Christ is the still-point in a turning world.  Everything before leads up to it, everything that follows flows from it.  It is the climax of the story the center-piece of the whole drama-T.S. Elliot 

The essential fact of Christianity is that God thought all men worth the sacrifice of his son.-William Barclay

You have made my days few;
the span of my years is as nothing before you.
Each man’s life is but a breath.
Selah(pause and ponder this)—Psalm 39:5 

Remember that when you leave this earth, you can take with you nothing you have received, fading symbols of honor, trappings of power, but only what you have given; a full heart enriched by honest service, love, sacrifice, and courage-Francis of Assisi (1181-1226)