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The Upload

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ:

I pray that you have had a blessed week.

Well, if you are counting, we are just over the halfway point on our journey through the season of Lent. As I often say, Lent is a journey we make once a year to the cross. In many ways, it is like that annual pilgrimage that many Jews used to literally make to Jerusalem for the Passover. Yes, every year, faithful Jews would gather up their families and travel to Jerusalem to celebrate their gift of freedom that was given to all Jews when God freed them from the slavery that they had been bonded to in Egypt.

Our pilgrimage, though, is much more symbolic, and we don’t literally travel to some far-off cross, but as we do make this journey to the cross, in some ways, it is a much more difficult trip to make than that physical journey the Jews used to make to Jerusalem. I say this because, to really make this journey to the cross, we are called to allow our lives that we know to die. Yes, I said “die”. I know none of us like the thought of death and most of us spend our whole life trying to avoid death, but Lent is a time of the year in which we are called to embrace death and allow it to enter our lives so that we might know true eternal life.

Two weeks ago, we read the story of Nicodemus, and in that story Nicodemus came to Jesus. It took real courage for him to visit Jesus, but when Jesus told him that he must die to his old ways of living, he didn’t understand. What Jesus was trying to explain to Nicodemus was that if he would let his old understanding of God’s law die, that then the Spirit would allow him to be born to a whole new way of living. Like Nicodemus, we, too, are on a journey, and we are being challenged to let our old ways die so that we might be born again. So what needs to die in your life that you might be born again?

In our story of the Samaritan woman at the well last week, the woman had to leave her past behind her and let it die. She had to leave behind the shame of having five husbands so that she might come to know that God truly loved her, even though she was broken. In her conversation with Jesus, she heard the promise of unconditional love, and in that moment, she left her jars behind. At that moment, she let her past die and she was born again to a new life filled with love and an eternal relationship with Christ.

So are you ready to let go of those things that are keeping you from being born again? Are you ready to embrace the truth that you, too, have been claimed by Christ and that no matter what you have done and no matter how bad things look in your life now Christ is waiting for you to accept his love? Lent is a great time to let go and, once again, feel Christ’s love.

Have a blessed week.

Shalom,

Pastor Dave

Tags: Weekly Word