Lists

On God rests my salvation and my glory; my mighty rock, my refuge is God.  - Psalm 62:7

I like lists.  Sometimes that is how I get through my day.  I suspect that my fondness for lists derives from the many years that I worked in construction before entering full-time ministry.  A list is good.  You can work your way down it. You can see the progress you make.

Even this week, I am working down a long do-list of things I have to get done.  Ask any pastor, Holy Week –while being wonderful, is an immense challenge.  So it helps to have a list to be working down.  As I write this on Wednesday evening, my list for getting ready for the services and activities that start Thursday evening and culminate with three services on Easter has been whittled down considerably.  I’ve even managed to sneak in a couple of hospital visits in-between list items.   It has been and will continue to be a great, but busy, week.

Lists….

Sometimes I wish that there was a list of things I could do to find myself in right relationship with God.  Because I like such lists, I could then just work my way down it, check each item off, and rest secure in knowing that I have done all the right things to be right with God.

I think the quote above from Psalm 62 contains such a list.  But it is a list that drives most of us crazy.  The list points to only one thing.  “On God,” writes the Psalmist, “rests my salvation….”

On God…we rest.  One thing.

You see that is really what Easter is all about.  Instead of working through a list of things that we need to do to please and get steady with God, there is only one thing we have to do.  Rest in Him.  For Jesus has done the rest…on the cross.  Everything else you can scratch off that list. 

If you do any one thing this Easter, just realize and count on the fact that Jesus went to the cross…to scratch everything off that list that we could never get right in the first place.  There is only one thing on the list.  It is Jesus.

That’s a list that has accomplished everything for me. 

Thank God.