Lent – Page 5 – LOVE | ACCEPT

Lent Spent with the Psalms Day Fourteen

A horse is a vain hope for deliverance; despite all of its great strength it cannot save. (Psalm 33:17)

We move closer to the Cross every day and yet it is still easy to lose sight of its reason for being. The horror of Calvary is the only hope we have but our wandering hearts tell us otherwise. Our souls are easily distracted when something of worldly power promises to deliver us. We are enticed by strength, by piety, by words.

But the eyes of the Lord are on those who fear him, on those whose hope is in his unfailing love,

to deliver them from death and keep them alive in famine. (vv 18-19)

Look up, look toward the Cross. That is our only hope. We cannot save ourselves and no one else on this planet can either. Our Father knows our ways and He knows that are prone to wander off, to be enticed by the strong things of this world. Satan promised the Lord power over the whole world ( Luke 4 … was the Wicked One just misinformed about Jesus? ) but Jesus knew better than to invest His trust in this false authority. He knew who to serve.

We wait in hope for the Lord; he is our help and our shield.

In him our hearts rejoice, for we trust in his holy name.

May your unfailing love rest upon us, O Lord, even as we put our hope in you. (vv 20-22)

Grace and peace to you.

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Lent Spent with the Psalms Day Thirteen

In the quiet, we see ourselves for who we are despite the public image that we work diligently to craft. We like to appear as though we have it all together, that we are staying close to the shepherd when in fact we are wanderers. Sometimes we will wander only a little way, keeping the Rock that is refuge in sight while playing around the edges of the territory. The road back will be clear and straight.

In you, O Lord, I have taken refuge; let me never be put to shame; deliver me in your righteousness.

Turn your ear to me, come quickly to my rescue; be my rock of refuge, a strong fortress to save me.

Since you are my rock and my fortress, for the sake of your name lead and guide me. (Psalm 31:1-3)

Can you still see the Rock?

Grace and peace to you.

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Lent Spent with the Psalms Day Twelve

In your meditations on the Cross, I’m sure that you have noted that we mark time by moving toward Calvary. The Cross never moves. It is our guiding light and our destination. God is immovable as well. When our relationship with Him seems broken or strained it is not Him who has moved away from us. It is us that have wandered. The Psalmist knows this truth and yet cries out in Psalm 27:

Hear my voice when I call, O Lord; be merciful to me and answer me.

My heart says of you, “Seek his face!” Your face, Lord, I will seek.

Do no hide your face from me, do not turn your servant away in anger; you have been my helper.

Do not reject me or forsake me, O God my Savior. (vv 7-9)

Look out over the weeks ahead and plan your course so that you seek His face. If His voice is absent or so quiet as to be difficult to hear, move toward Him. Recognize that we are prone to wander away from the Shepherd. The more we try to find our own way, the more lost we become. Look toward the light of the Cross and set your compass on its glow.

Grace and peace to you.

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Lent Spent with the Psalms Day Eleven

The Lord reigns forever; he has established his throne for judgment.

He will judge the world in righteousness; he will govern the peoples with justice. (Psalm 9:7-8)

Easter is the antithesis of justice. We do not receive the punishment that is so obviously due us. Rather, God, in His infinite mercy, sacrificed that which was so precious to Him on our behalf. The righteousness of Christ becomes our righteousness. We are able to stand before His throne without guilt, a condition that we could never achieve otherwise.

The Lord is a refuge for the oppressed, a stronghold in times of trouble.

Those who know your name will trust in you, for you, Lord, have never forsaken those who seek you. (vv 9-10)

As recipients of the gift of Grace, our meditation becomes action. We identify those oppressed spiritually and by the injustice of the world and point them to the Forgiver. Knowing the location of the refuge, it is our responsibility as Saints to lead others to its safety. Look about today and find those looking for direction.

Grace and peace to you.

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Lent Spent with the Psalms Day Ten

The psalmist expresses his despair in Psalm 129 as he speaks of his (their) oppression from youth. His enemies have not given a moments rest in their persecution and he prays to God for their destruction. We can identify with these feelings so many centuries later. Who among us has not wished evil on someone else?

We’re often puzzled as we read near the crucifixion event when the crowds are given a choice to free Jesus or Barabbas and they choose the murderer. Were the crowds more evil than us? A better question for reflection today is whether or not we do the same thing in our daily life. Do we deny Christ in favor of something else? God knew our ways as He spoke through the prophet Isaiah:

He grew up before him like a tender shoot, and like a root out of dry ground.

He had not beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.

He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering.

Like one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not. (vv 52:2-3)

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Lent Spent with the Psalms Day Nine

As we considered yesterday, our perspective is more limited than we can even imagine. Not only is our vision limited, but our concept of time is constrained by our imagination as well. Forever for us ends upon our own expiration. We can’t see it any other way. The psalmist, in Psalm 13, cries out to God in this pinched voice:

How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever?

How long will you hide your face from me?

How long must I wrestle with my thoughts and every day have sorrow in my heart?

How long will my enemy triumph over me? (vv 1-2)

The Cross that we are approaching day by day holds the answer to these plaintive questions. God had planned for the Cross before time, knowing that creatures with will posed a risk in their love and devotion. How long has God loved us? Forever. How long has he planned to redeem us? Forever. How long will he continue to love his creations? Forever.

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Lent Spent with the Psalms Day Eight

Come, let us bow down in worship, let us kneel before the Lord our Maker;

for he is our God and we are the people of his pasture, the flock under his care. (Psalm 95:6-7)

Golgotha is still distant, its horror not yet in view. We feel secure but can’t quite identify why that is. Our pride may tell us that we have created a hedge around ourselves. We can protect ourselves and provide for all of our needs.

Rarely do we recognize how limited our perspective is.

God views us from His unparalleled perspective, seeing everything that approaches us no matter how distant. He sees us as His lambs, innocent and carefree in not knowing all that threatens us. The Good Shepherd scans the horizon without rest to keep the lambs and the good sheep reward him with loyalty.

Kneel down and worship.

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Lent Spent with the Psalms Day Seven

Restore us, O God Almighty; make you face shine upon us, that we may be saved. (Psalm 80:7)

From John’s cry at the Jordan river to dark day of the Cross, Jesus made it clear that everything was changing in relation to man and God. Repentance would no longer take the form of external sacrifice of a prescribed nature. True repentance would require allegiance to the One Ultimate Sacrifice. Though there would be momentary darkness at Calvary, Resurrection morning would shine a warm, sustained light upon us.

We can meditate on the grace extended to us through that sacrificial act and be thankful that we no longer must plea to the heavens as the Pslamist does in Psalm 80,

Hear us, O Shepherd of Israel, you who lead Joseph like a flock; you who sit enthroned between the cherubim, shine forth before Ephraim, Benjamin and Manasseh.

Awaken your might; come and save us. (vv 1-2)

God has extended salvation to all who will repent and name Him as Lord in their lives. The light shines on all and yet, some will continue to see the darkness. Let them see the effect the light has had on you and invite them out. God is good and His face shines upon us.

Grace and peace to you.

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Lent Spent with the Psalms Day Six

The Lord has dealt with me according to my righteousness; according to the cleanness of my hands he has rewarded me. (v20)

In a moment of blinding clarity, meditating on this verse from Psalm 18 jolts your heart and mind to the reality. We are blessed beyond our ability to express it that God has not dealt with us according to the cleanness of our hands. Walking toward the still distant cross of Easter, the reality of the resurrection casts a searing white glow on the dirt still in our lives, despite our professions of Christ and the fact that we follow hard behind Christ. Continued repentance scrubs the hands cleaner but there are still stubborn spots.

Only the grace of the Lord will finally succeed in scrubbing these last final imperfections from our hands. Loyal discipleship will mature us in cooperation with the Spirit to rid ourselves of the barriers that separate us from our Father. We recognize that we will not be perfected in this life, that our enemy as well as our own brokenness will forever conspire to ensnare us to our final days. This is why we stay close to our Shepherd, despite our propensity to wander.

I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. (John 10:11)

Grace and peace to you.

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Lent Spent with the Psalms Day Five

We’ll begin this week of meditations by thinking not of ourselves but of the people we pass by each day without remembering that God loves them intensely. Our repentance is necessary to the degree that we have allowed ourselves to become hardened to them. Psalm 10 can serve as the foundation of our prayer today

Arise, Lord! Lift up your hand, O God.

Do not forget the helpless. (v12)

We often take for granted that everyone is able to follow the Lord and repent should they choose to do so, but this isn’t true. Many of the people that become invisible to us are suffering from incapacities that cannot be readily identified. Those brought down by drink and drugs are easy to categorize. Mental suffering is much more difficult to pinpoint since the sufferer is often unable to voice the problem. The good news can become just so many words until we have helped a person deal with the underlying issues.

You hear, O Lord, the desire of the afflicted; you encourage them, and you listen to their cry,

defending the fatherless and the oppressed, in order that man, who is of the earth, may terrify no more. (vv 17-18)

Grace and peace to you.

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