Chocolate

The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise. Psalm 51:17

In recent years I started giving up a certain thing for Lent. I didn’t use to, as I tended to see such actions as a semi-prideful, almost self-serving exercise in futility. I don’t know what has changed in me; maybe it’s just that I’m getting old.  So be it.

Every Lent over the past few years then I have given something up. I will again this year. 

Chocolate.

Oh, there is still the self-serving element to my sacrifice. Very much so. If I am diligent, I will shed about 5-10 excess pounds. Please don’t feel bad for those pounds; they will not be lost forever however, as they seem to routinely rally back into place by early summer.

The best part of this self-serving exercise is this.  I do, when the chocolate pangs hit, remember what Christ went through for me, the road to the cross, the brutal execution on the tree.  I think back on rather gory scenes from the movie “The Passion of the Christ,” and suddenly my pangs seem rather silly.  I also use those panging times to stop what I am doing, and pray – usually about the first thing or person that comes to mind.

I hope and pray that is actually why I give up chocolate each year.   It’s just that sometimes it still feels that what I am doing is rather hollow.  Psalm 51 has this great line in it that says “The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.”

And…I don’t think David was writing about chocolate.  But he was addressing a much deeper yearning that believers and trusters in Jesus Christ feel somewhere deep in their souls.  We may not know always how to address those yearnings, but they are there. Somewhere in my past I heard this yearning described as “A God-shaped hole” that we all have.

And chocolate will never fill the hole.

As we move into Lent my prayer for us all is that that God shaped hole that we’ve been filling up with (fill in the blank), will be left open for the Holy Spirit to inhabit; a sacrifice that God will not despise.

May your Lenten observance draw you close and closer to the One that ultimately fills all our yearnings.

Home

Our home yesterday (Feb 1), with tree cutting in progress.

For we know that if the tent that is our earthly home is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. - 2 Corinthians 5:1

I attended a well-known worship conference last week, and while there, four or five times I was asked, “Where are you from?”  It’s a common question whenever pastors gather together, and in this case, the same when pastors and church musicians gather from around the country.

But these days when I get asked the question, more often than not, I answer by first saying, “That’s a complicated question.”

Where are you from?

Susie and I have been in western Pennsylvania almost a decade; we are now in our second community since moving east.  Before then we lived in three locations together in Southern California, and a couple of locations each elsewhere in California before we married.

But. 

Susie is originally from the farm belt of Iowa; I am originally from a small town in eastern Washington State.

Where are you from? 

Of course, the correct answer at the moment would be that I am from Rayne Township in Indiana County, Pennsylvania.  That is the answer that is being fished for when I am at conferences. But the question itself stirs up emotions in me these days that surprise me.  Because I really don’t know anymore where am I am from; let me put it this way. If you ask me where home is…I would not know what to answer. Is it Clarkston Washington? Is it La Verne or Lytle Creek or Riverside, California? Is it Uniontown or Rayne Township in Pennsylvania? Honestly, I have no idea anymore, and it bothers me.  

We all have a yearning for home.  And it is a tough proposition when you don’t know where home is.

The short passage above is about a concept that rises up frequently in the Bible. It is about home.  I suppose it  is both metaphor and reality.  The home (whatever or wherever it is) we have on this earth is ultimately temporary.  But God has a permanent home for us, “a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.”

Jesus put it like this: “In my Father's house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you?” (visit John 14:2)  Metaphor? No, far more than that. It’s more likely a literal reality that he wanted his disciples then, and you and I now, to trust in.  There is a place waiting for those who trust in Jesus, it is ultimately our home.

Yes, pastors tend to be a bit transient; but the reality is that we all are just sort of traveling through this thing called life.  And God wants us to consider where our real home is.  It’s not so much about where we are from after all. It’s all about where we are going.

‘Where are you from’ simply becomes, ‘where are you going?’

And that is what is important.

P.S.

Susie and I have been so grateful for the warm ‘home’ receptions we have received at whatever congregation I have served; we feel especially blessed by the Presbyterian Church of Marion Center, PA.  It makes this transient existence far more bearable.  I may not know where I am from, but I am very grateful for where I am.