The Upload
Posted on Feb 12, 2016 by
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ:
I pray you have had a blessed week.
Have you ever felt like you just weren’t good enough? I know there was a point in my life where I felt that way. When I was young, I was overweight, and I was never part of the “cool” group of kids. I loved sports, but I was never good enough for the coaches of my teams to play me much. Other kids made fun of my last name, my weight, my inabilities in sports, and so much more. I often walked home thinking, why can't I be like the “cool” kids?
But much of that changed for me during my freshman year of high school. I had just moved to a new town, and I knew no one and I felt very inadequate at first, of course. I had stopped participating in sports, and I would just go to school, and walk home with my older sister, and hang out at home. But then one day, of all people, my English teacher, Mrs. Mitchell, told me that she was impressed with my ability to write, and she began to challenge me and push that gift for communication that she said I had. She encouraged me to get involved in the speech club at school and to write more. And as I began to use and grow the gifts I had, I started to gain confidence in myself. And then, in the early spring, just before the track team began to practice, my PE teacher, Mr. Womble, encouraged me to go out for the track team, where I learned to throw the discus and shot put. I didn’t become State champion, but I did do quite well. What I learned that year, and in the years to come, was that, although I couldn’t do everything well, there were things I was good at, and that I was more than “good enough.” Two teachers saw in me gifts I could not see and gifts that the rest of the world tried to squelch in me.
As we enter the Season of Lent, our Gospel text, Luke 4:1-13, is a story about how the devil tried to tempt Jesus into believing he wasn’t good enough. Jesus had just been baptized, and he went into the wilderness filled with the Holy Spirit to prepare for his ministry, and while he was there the devil tried to tempt Jesus into believing that the gifts God had given him were not good enough. But unlike me, who believed it when others told me I was not good enough as a young boy, Jesus knew better, and he overcame the devil’s temptations to turn from God and God’s ways.
With each temptation, the devil sought to undermine Jesus’ confidence in both God and himself. But with each temptation, Jesus stated his faith in God and remembered that he was more than “good enough” to be all God created him to be.
In this world, we are often tempted to think that we are not good enough, and this week we are reminded that God loves us, all of us, as we are, and that in the waters of our baptism God has claimed us as we are. In fact, God loves us so much that God sent his only Son into the world to suffer the same temptations we experience, to be rejected as we often feel rejected. and to die as we will die, all so that we may know God is with us forever.
My prayer this week is that, regardless of how young or how old we are, we know that each of us is more than good enough for God and that God will keep loving us no matter what.
Have a blessed week!
Shalom,
Pr. Dave