PASTOR'S THOUGHTS:

 Lent is soon here. Ash Wednesday services begin on February 17^th at 10 a.m. and 6:30 p.m. and continue until Holy Week. 

     What are we to think of Lent? I tore out an article from Forward In Christ a couple of years ago that I read before every Lenten Season. I think it really hits home. Allow me to quote it for you word for word. It was written by Joseph. B. Johnson – a pastor at True North campus ministry. Here it is – please take it to heart:

 

I HATE LENT

Lent forces me to look at things I want to forget.

 

     Oh Lent, dark season of dread and despair! How I hate and despise thee! You come into my world as winter and spend your 40 days trying to destroy my whole life! You force me to look at things I want to forget. You make me hear things that I have worked so hard to ignore. Why do you insist on showing me the cross? Why do you force me to see the pain and the sorrow, the blood, the nails, the cursed tree? Is there not enough sorrow in this world that you have to show me the Son of God dying? Why Lent, do you make me look when even the sun in the sky could not bear to keep shining? I hate you for making me watch. And why, Lent, do you tell me that I am to blame? That it was not Pilate and the people of Israel but it was me. It was me! How dare you accuse me of this atrocity and drag me to the foot of Calvary!

     You fail to understand that I don’t have time for this! My days are full; my work important. I have commitments, family, and a schedule. I don’t have time for a grim, unwanted guest! I want to see life and joy. I want the brothers three – victory, glory and fame – to visit me. Keep you sorrow. Keep your guilt and your tears. I want the crown. I want Hollywood happy endings! So why, brutal Lent, do you make me kneel next to him as the soldieries mock and torture? Why must I hear the scourge tearing his flesh and the crowd ridiculing him? Why grab me and place my shoulder with Simon’s on the cursed cross? I want sunshine, and you bury me in purple darkness!

     Grim Lent, you are a hard doctor, and I hate everything you say about me. My pride hates you. My smug self-righteousness loathes you. My independent spirit, that wishes the throne of heaven some other way, wants you dead!

     But my new self loves you even as it weeps tears of sorrow filled with joy. I still hate what I have to watch. I want to look away from my Lord’s scorned compassion and his terrible loneness on that tree of death. I still don’t want to see my sins nailed, written, and engraved all over his body – as he hangs there, the shame of earth, the glory of heaven.

     Oh lovely Lent! You break my heart, and I’m not the same person when you’re done. I love Jesus. I love him because you remind me that in spite of everything I’ve done, he did everything for me! 

     Yes, Lent, I hate your grim and dark reminders of my failures and sins. They are painful. “I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes.” (Job 42:6)

     But Lent, you are a faithful doctor giving me distasteful medicine so I might discover the healing of Christ. I still find the dark days disturbing, but I need to be disturbed so the crucified Jesus can rescue me from myself. Then I can sing, “Oh Lent, how I love thee! Let me count the ways.”

 

To that, your pastor says “AMEN!” May the Holy Spirit give us all a miserable, disturbing, joyful and fulfilling Lenten season.

                                              Peace in Jesus,

                                              Pastor Krueger

WELS Daily Devotions