Day 3 & 4: Something Lost and Something Gained
Years ago something amazing happened. Jesus died for us, and we cannot talk about this enough because we are human beings and we are fallen from grace, sinners, and always in need of Jesus and his mighty love and grace.
Ponder on that for a moment.
There is never going to be a time where you will not need Jesus. You are always going to be in need of Him.
Jesus however does not want to leave us there. The other side of this is that we are never alone.
I was watching the Acton UMC services today because I am working from home from a long weekend of going to a Mavs game with my students and worship and mission trip signups on Sunday. Yesterday and during the season of Lent Acton UMC in all their morning worship services is talking about “love.” Also yesterday my wife, Amy was preaching so this was another great reason to watch their services.
So during the worship there was this video about the “Christ Story” featuring DeeAnn Hall, a friend of ours and a vibrant young adult member of Acton UMC. About halfway through the video she is talking about the christ story in her own life and how it has affected all areas of her life, personal, as a parent, as a wife, etc. After talking about this for about a few seconds she uttered a phrase that struck me deep.
“This Christ story is so fresh. It happened thousand of years ago, but even now it is still so fresh.”
Whoa.
Didn’t that resonate with you? The freshness of Christ’s story seems to be more powerful during lent, or is it that our hearts and our minds are attuned to the power more? The power of the gospel is the fact that it is fresh, alive, vibrant, expansive, external, internal, and on and on. It is one thing and it is all things.
Mind boggling right!?
Your mind is truly boggled right? (movie reference anyone?)
This picture above was taken by me for this photo challenge but it was also captured at Fusion Worship Wednesday at FUMC Cleburne Student Ministries where we engaged in prayer stations for the message that night. You will notice that the words are in different color. Being that I was there I know why. It’s because each of these words were written by different people. This was written on a prayer station called the journey, where you are encouraged to write words or draw symbols that symbolize your journey with Christ. To basically conceptualize your Christ Story. When we first started this part of worship tonight one of the first words that was written was “Alone.” This grieved me so I began to be in prayer for the person that wrote this word down and ask God to be with them and to send them the encouragement that they needed and equip the people in this person’s life that they needed.
Near the end of the night I saw a new word.
“Never.”
Making it “NEVER ALONE.”
May you know that the Lord of creation still has a story that fresh and vibrant in your life right now and may you additionally know that you are never alone.
Amen.