Lent 2014
March 26, 2014 

I do not want you to be unaware, brothers and sisters, that our ancestors were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea, and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, and all ate the same spiritual food, and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank from the spiritual rock that followed them, and the rock was Christ.—1 Corinthians 10:1-4  

Our scripture today flashed me forward to Revelation 1:8: ‘I am the Alpha and the Omega’, says the Lord God, who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty. For some reason I take great solace in the understanding that Christ was with or of God from the beginning, always has been, and always will be. I probably feel this way because in and through the man Jesus, I have been able to comprehend more about God than I would have been able to without knowledge of Jesus who was the Christ. The motto of my church, Loving God and Loving the Way Jesus Loved, stems from that same vine. 

There may be some who can love the way Jesus loved without first knowing God but I doubt it. Loving as Jesus loved takes all of oneself and then some, but that is what we are called to do. Jesus commanded us to love our neighbors as we love ourselves and therein is a hint at how loving the way Jesus loved is possible. We must accept that God loves us totally, completely, and without reservations.  

Now most of us know we can be pretty unlovable at times. God’s grace given freely through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ is the Rock on which we can rest our lack of loving and it is through the living waters that pour forth from that Rock that our cleansing is realized. We do have to lean on the Rock to receive its strength and that requires repentance. In cycling through our growth in Christ we are renewed to love even more. 

There is a whole school full of children out there who desperately needs our love. It is time for us to get on about the business of bearing the fruit of God’s amazing and enabling gift of grace and love.  

Prayer: O Great Redeemer, continue to make us whole as you persist in pulling us out of complacency to answer your call to love. Amen.

The identities of students, families, or staff in stories that are shared in the devotions have been altered to protect their privacy. Any similarities between these stories and the experience of others are coincidental. No stories about students, families of students, or staff from Putnam Heights Elementary School are included in any of these devotions.

All scriptures are quoted from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicized Edition, copyright 1989, 1995, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of Churches of Christ in the United States of American. Used by permission. All rights reserved.