Lenten Devotional 2017 - Restored: Finding Redemption in Our Mess

Scripture

2 Corinthians 5:20-6:10 The Message (MSG)

5 16-20 Because of this decision we don't evaluate people by what they have or how they look. We looked at the Messiah that way once and got it all wrong, as you know. We certainly don't look at him that way anymore. Now we look inside, and what we see is that anyone united with the Messiah gets a fresh start, is created new. The old life is gone; a new life burgeons! Look at it! All this comes from the God who settled the relationship between us and him, and then called us to settle our relationships with each other. God put the world square with himself through the Messiah, giving the world a fresh start by offering forgiveness of sins. God has given us the task of telling everyone what he is doing. We're Christ's representatives. God uses us to persuade men and women to drop their differences and enter into God's work of making things right between them. We're speaking for Christ himself now: Become friends with God; he's already a friend with you.

21 How? you ask. In Christ. God put the wrong on him who never did anything wrong, so we could be put right with God.

6 1-10 Companions as we are in this work with you, we beg you, please don't squander one bit of this marvelous life God has given us. God reminds us,

I heard your call in the nick of time;

The day you needed me, I was there to help.

Well, now is the right time to listen, the day to be helped. Don't put it off; don't frustrate God's work by showing up late, throwing a question mark over everything we're doing. Our work as God's servants gets validated-or not-in the details. People are watching us as we stay at our post, alertly, unswervingly . . . in hard times, tough times, bad times; when we're beaten up, jailed, and mobbed; working hard, working late, working without eating; with pure heart, clear head, steady hand; in gentleness, holiness, and honest love; when we're telling the truth, and when God's showing his power; when we're doing our best setting things right; when we're praised, and when we're blamed; slandered, and honored; true to our word, though distrusted; ignored by the world, but recognized by God; terrifically alive, though rumored to be dead; beaten within an inch of our lives, but refusing to die; immersed in tears, yet always filled with deep joy; living on handouts, yet enriching many; having nothing, having it all.

Meditation

If Not Now, When? - Tom Wilkinson

It used to be a fashionable dinner party or cocktail party parlor game to guess one another's dominant personality characteristic, according to what is called the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), developed by a mother-daughter team, Katherine Briggs and Isabel Briggs Myers, after the pioneering work of psychologist extraordinaire Carl Jung. According to the MBTI, there are four principal psychological functions by which humans experience the world - sensation, intuition, feeling, and thinking - and that one of these four functions is dominant for a person most of the time*. The resulting permutations of those four vectors yields sixteen distinct personality types, and, so the theory goes, every one of us falls into one of those sixteen buckets. Certainly, it is naive and simplistic to reduce the complexity of human personality into a mere sixteen types, but it can explain a lot.

For example, I possess the ENFP personality type, which is shorthand for Extraversion-INtuition-Feeling-Perceiving. "So what?" you might ask. Well it explains a lot of things, my penchant for the theatre, procrastination (I'm writing this on deadline), starting but not finishing projects, etc. I also have the good fortune to be married to a fellow ENFP, which means it's a miracle we ever get anything done around the house.

Therefore, I am struck by the sense of urgency Paul projects when he

writes, "Well, now is the right time to listen, the day to be helped. Don't put it off; don't frustrate God's work by showing up late, throwing a question mark over everything we're doing" (The Message). The NRSV puts it thusly, " See, now is the acceptable time; see, now is the day of salvation!" In other words, what are you waiting for? Get off the couch, you potato, and get going. Eternity begins today!

God the creator built the welcome table, Jesus the redeemer set it, and the Holy Spirit sent the invitations. Come to the dinner party!

You'll never be the same.