The Importance of the Christian Calendar

I may lose a little bit of the Baptist points I have accumulated for saying this, but there is something that I think that the Catholic church across the street does better than we do.  Ouch, it hurts just admitting it.  Many times however there is a greater appreciation for the Christian calendar at "high church" settings that I find that go unnoticed in my Baptist tradition.  Today is Fat Tuesday.  And while there is no special religious significance to either the title or to the day itself, it is a crucial day in the life of the church.  It is the day before Ash Wednesday.  Tomorrow marks the beginning of the celebration of lent - the 40 days leading up to Good Friday and Resurrection Sunday.  During lent, for centuries people of the Christian faith have found ways to remind themselves of the sacrifice of Christ and have sought to focus their attention upon the work of Christ in a special way during these 40 days.  (Obviously this is a large over-simplification, but for the purposes of the blog today I have less interest in explaining church history and more in the focusing my attention on the death of Christ.)

Like Christmas, we often approach Easter with a very secular attitude.  We shop for candy, decorate eggs and then if we are feeling really spiritual we find some way to connect these secular practices with the church's message about the resurrection of Christ.  We use resurrection eggs to tell the story now.  The sad thing is that the church has at its disposal a very marvelous and unique way to remember and recall and keep in front of our people the events that we celebrate - the calendar.  When we choose to focus our attention on Christ for 40 days throughout lent we are commemorating His death, burial and resurrection.  When we choose to find ways to intentionally focus our thoughts we are accomplishing something that connects us and our children to something far deeper than a resurrection egg filled with candy will ever do. 

Let me be clear that there is nothing magical about the calendar and it is not nearly as important as the events that it recalls that are recorded for us in Scripture.  In fact, this is why we associate the celebrations of the calendar with our catholic neighbors - in some cases the calendar has superseded the Scriptures and this is NOT what we want to do.  Celebrating Lent does not make you a super-Christian or draw you closer to God, only the blood of Christ can draw you close to God.  However, the limitations of something do not make it useless and I believe that using the calendar to focus our attention and reminding us that the events in the life of Christ define our lives help us to remember that our day to day needs to be focused on Christ. 

Tomorrow begins a 40 day celebration and remembrance of the death, burial and resurrection of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.  Whether or not you celebrate Lent, I hope you will celebrate the event that it commemorates - it is an event that we are to proclaim until Christ returns.  I thank God for His dying for me and look forward to celebrating it in the days, and weeks, and years that He chooses to give me.  Soli Deo Gloria.

I am spoiled.

I have come to the realization that I am spoiled.  All parents know about that moment when their child has been spoiled.  For instance, perhaps the child has gone to grandma's house and enjoyed their fill of cookies and sugary drinks and then they come home to reality where breakfast has more bran than sugar and drinks are clear because they are water.  It is hard to come down from the mountain of grandmas to the reality of home. 

I realize however that this is how I often view my relationship with God.  When things are going good I feel like I am at grandmas.  God is answering prayers and moving in marvelous ways, my bank account is full and I am happy as a clam at high tide.  Then something bad happens and I wonder immediately where God went and why my life is now not the mountain-top experience I long for?  When things get hard I wonder where God is.  Here is the kicker.  I am spoiled. 

No where does God promise me perpetual bliss until the moment that He returns.  In fact He is pretty clear that until that happens life will be hard.  So I can be thankful for the times when things are going perfectly, but when things do not, it is not that God is distant, it is that I am spoiled and my expectations have changed. 

This is just my story.  But I wonder if there are others out there willing to admit with me that we are spoiled.  We treat God as though He is our grandfather and expect Him to continue to spoil us.  When he does not, we throw a little tantrum.  May God help us to rely on Him in good and bad times and trust that what He does is best for us, even when it does not feel too good!

Life is hard, God is good.

I was thinking on the way to work this morning about how often I think about things but in the wrong order.  The title of the post today contains two statements that both are true.  And if we think about both, we tend to think about them in this order.  We know life is hard.  It is all around us.  We have to bury loved ones who die far too early.  We experience sickness and pain.  We know those or may be those who struggle with depression and anxiety.  Life is hard.  And then we sort of tack on the ending, "but God is good." as if that is the thing that will allow us to be able to endure the hard times that life has to throw at us.  When we have a few moments of decency, we simply wait for the shoe to drop and more hard times to come.  This is defining life by the statement "life is hard."

Romans 8 seems to take a different approach.  It begins instead with the premise that God has forgiven us in Christ and we are not condemned.  And if we are not condemned than we have the greatest gift of all and therefore we know that God is working out all things for our good.  (Romans 8:28) I want you to read that again.  All things are being worked for good.  We do not have to endure.  We do not have to engage the world with a defeated attitude that waits for the next bad thing, God is good.  If we define life in the reverse order and start from the premise that God is good, our perspective changes.  Now we are not enduring life, but as Romans 8 says, we are overwhelmingly conquering life.  We see the pain as challenges, difficulties as opportunities for God to show how good He really is. 

The fundamental difference as I see it in my life is a question of who is first.  If I am first in my thoughts I will first think about how hard life is and then secondly think about the goodness of my God.  If I am thinking about God and His kingdom first than I will think of God being good in all things. 

Please note that this is not a call to minimize the pain.  The Scriptures are clear that the statement life is hard is true, and particularly true for believers.  We do not pretend there is no pain.  We do not fake a smile and pretend we do not hurt.  Instead we embrace the hurt and thank God for the opportunity to see just how good He can be.  So, God is good.  And Life is hard.  God help us to keep the order straight.

I am a Witness

Have you considered that if you are a follower of Jesus Christ that you have a responsibility - a job that Christ left His disciples until He returns?  Most of us take the time to fulfill our responsibilities and yet we think very little about what Christ said to His disciples in Acts 1:8.  He told them that they would be His witnesses.  His martyrs.   That by their lives or deaths they were to testify to the truth found in the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ.  This is what we are to do. 

Paul reminds of this truth in 1 Corinthians 11 as well when he reminds us that every time we partake of communion we are proclaiming the Lord's death until He comes.  This puts into perspective for us how we often engage life and our relationship with God.  We tend to live and act as though God is a part of what we do, but often the part that gets put last.  We are called to think like Christ and yet we only think about it when we need something.  We do not strive to think like Christ while we have things handled ourselves and so we wind up testifying to our great strategic thinking.  We are called to show love like Christ and yet when we show love we tend to do so with the goal in mind that people will like us better and so again testify more about us than we do about Christ. 

At the end of the day perhaps we should evaluate our day on how well we testified to Christ on any given day.  Was today about me or was today about Christ?  In doing so we shift how we look at each day. Perhaps this will lead to a better start to my day?  Perhaps it will lead to a better perception of who I am and why I am here.  But regardless we can know that we are fulfilling the purpose for which God has placed us on this earth if we witness to Christ during every available opportunity!