Grace and peace to you.
your Son, in obedience to the Spirit
that we may press on towards Easter
through Jesus Christ our Lord. AMEN.
It was great to see so many people attend our Ash Wednesday services.
“Lent is a season of repentance and preparation for new life just like Advent and that is why we use the liturgical colour purple. It is about turning, overturning and re-turning as reflected both in Joel and 2 Corinthians – which testify to this re-organisation of the world under the reign of God. Lent also disrupts the conventional wisdom of a world that says life begins at birth and ends in physical death of a body. St. Paul eloquently discusses the way of God that is contrary to this world in 1 Corinthians 1: 22. The ashes that we wear on our foreheads today are a reminder that physical death of the body is only the beginning of our eternal life in Christ. Yes, it is on this day that we, as Christians, make a declaration to the world of our intentions to die to all things that keep us entombed in sin and separated from God i.e. by breaking God’s Ten Commandments. ( Rev Dr B Buthulezi tssf)
Moses addressed the nation in the desert and said to them that life involved a great but simple choice. Choose life- we like the people of the bible that we read about, often forget that everything we have is provided by God. We, like them, are prone to attribute our success to the work of our own hands and our failures to the influence of others on our lives.
But life is best understood as a matter of choices. When we choose wisely we benefit in life and when we choose badly we lose. When we choose life in Christ, though we may suffer trials and setbacks we overcome them and are more than conquerors.
In Lent we evaluate our choices. We examen the things that we include and the things we resist. We seek to remove the obstacles which prevent us from the life that we desire.
So, choose life.
Life is what we have when we choose discipleship that is a disciplined way of serving God in Jesus Christ.
Life is what we get when we choose to imitate Christ. If our actions are not Christ like then we are failing to live up to our God given potential.
To choose life means to seek to understand the life of Christ.
To choose life means to follow the pattern of Christ, and for us to do this it involves dying to self, repenting, and being raised in Christ, forgiven.
Repentance is us turning away for our selfish desires and offering ourselves to be used by God.
Forgiveness is about God accepting us as the beloved, freed for service. Forgiveness unties the things that bind us in bondage and frees us to be more than we are, it frees us to be in Christ and through Christ and with Christ, useful participants in the kingdom of God.
What stands in your way, what binds you up, what prevents you from being all God wants you to be?
Repent and believe the good news. Leave the past in ashes and choose life.
Choose the way of Christ.
Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
and where there is sadness, joy.
O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek
to be consoled as to console;
to be understood as to understand;
to be loved as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive;
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.
Amen.
