Metanoia: March 20, 2018

Numbers 21:4–9
John 8:21–30
Psalm 102:15–22

But the people became impatient on the way. (Numbers 21:4b)

So, how are you doing?

Here we are, some five weeks into Lent. All this reading and praying and discipline and reflection – it can be hard to maintain. What kind of journey is this? Can’t we just go back to the pancakes?!

Forty days of Lent (not including Sundays, which are always days of resurrection!) can get to be a bit much. People can become impatient.

How’re you doing?

The Israelites got a little bit daft. They forgot where they had been. “Why did you bring us out of slavery to die here?” “There’s no food or water. We hate this miserable food.” (Well, which is it, no food or miserable food? Logically, it can’t be both.) And what’s with the snakes?! It’s all getting kinda bizarre.

Even Jesus seems to be out of himself. “Where I am going, you cannot come” sure sounds different than just a few chapters later where he says “…I go and prepare a place for you…. And you know the way to the place where I am going.” Whatsup widdat?!

Holy Week starts on Sunday – Palm Sunday. Change is in sight. Continue in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and in the prayers!

Your discipline and prayer are gifts to God and to yourself. Hang in there. Keep it up. (And if you’ve not got anything to keep up, don’t worry, start where you are, here today. You’re not behind.) God will use what you give: the time, the study, the meditation, the intention. God will reach right into that exhausting, bizarre stuff of life and bless you in ways you can’t begin to imagine. How’re you doing?

Holy One, walk with me. Let me know if I am doing this right. It gets dreary. I want to serve you. Amen.
-Helen McPeak