Praise comes for change - from transformation. There has to be a before the change - something has to be missing, hurting, hard, or insufficient for us to desire it to change - and the woman wanted to be healed. Transformations are powerful for those who are hunched over in our world. For those who aren’t, the point is often missed.

It is exhausting to be right. It is unnerving to maintain a position in life wrapped up in rightness, unable to be wrong or to change my heart, my mind, and my position on issues or feelings. Why must the need to question or change my mind feel like an utter failure?

I woke up this morning, and like all mornings I opened my phone and started reading social media posts and the news. There is a lot of pain in the world this day. As I paused to reflect, it welled up inside me. Then, I turned to today’s scripture and I thought, perhaps others might need easy, effortless access to these words from the Psalms.

We divide. Not the Gospel. I was feeling, at best, like I once did at 16 alone and hopeless in my bed after a revival service. How can anyone live up to the rules of righteousness or ever be good enough to hit all the necessary triggers for God’s love, acceptance, grace, and salvation?

We seem obsessed with what others are doing and how we compare. In today’s lesson, Jesus highlights three faith practices of his Jewish tradition – praying, almsgiving, and fasting. He isn’t inventing them and making them Christian practices, he is lifting them up as familiar and significant from his tradition.

Now, what does it really mean to love your enemy, forgive, turn the other cheek, give your coat, and not judge your neighbors? First, let’s set the stage that Jesus has just been telling the disciples and the crowd about the “blessed are you’s” and “woes are you.”

When I first started the practice of listening more deeply to God I thought I had to have this “conversion” experience every time, much like what was described to me during revivals as a child. “Give your life to Christ and then you will be saved. You will be changed!” But it never felt “right” to me. I felt I was always waiting for this smack over the head or bright light or something, which honestly made me feel like I was doing it wrong; like I was an imposter.

As you walk through this life, may you recognize God in your midst. In the shadows, and classrooms, and bedrooms, and office spaces, and social spaces, and in all spaces, may you feel the presence of the Spirit there, in, with, and through you, lifting your chin, filling your cup, giving you rest, and claiming you as a child of God fully as completely as your whole wonderfully beautiful self.

God was there, comforting me with, “ask me instead.” The problem was that I never recognized it for what it was. I didn’t have the skills to recognize it. I was busy with my Sunday School lessons memorizing and reciting. I never learned how to listen, I only learned how to absorb. So, as I struggled with not living a life worthy of God, I just thought it was me not listening, rebelling, or rejecting this critical piece of life that was required for salvation.

Today’s scripture lesson really only includes verses 41-44 - where we hear that Jesus wept over the city. I found it important for this reflection to include the full story back to verse 28 so you have some context. Jesus is on his way to Jerusalem and the disciples bring him a colt to ride into the city - the city where he knows he is going to be crucified. The people sing praises to his name and the Pharisees tell him to send them away. We usually hear this text on Palm Sunday in the liturgical church.

So, certainty? I guess I could say I am certain Covid is here, alive and well, and going forth and multiplying. While I am in awe and a bit jealous of the certainty with which the Psalmist expresses the sovereignty of God, I feel the need to remind myself, and you friend, that this is only a snippet of the longest Psalm in the Bible. If I tried to base my daily markers of faithfulness on this single scripture reading I would fail, and while I am not certain of most things most days, I am grateful that God’s love for me, and for you, is not dependent on our certainty. It isn’t dependent on our ability to believe or have faith or show up or proclaim.

Spiritual disciplines are practices for developing, growing, and strengthening our ability to hear and recognize God in, with, and through our lives. While there is no formal, almighty, list of spiritual disciplines, some are more common than others. Throughout time, people have made suggestions about how to categorize them. Suggestions have included concepts like corporate or individual, internal or external, self-denial or action. I find it best to leave them uncategorized. I often feel pressure to choose equally from each category.

I will say it again, for me, the church is the starting place for recognizing that we are not alone. God has given us to each other. God is with us. Whether we make that divine connection within the four walls of a building or Christ shows himself to us through a connection with another person, the Church is there to remind us we belong and not that we belong to a building with four walls, but to a people of God – we belong to God.

In my previous way of thinking, hearing this scripture from Luke, and saying the Lord’s prayer each Sunday in worship as a child and young adult, I heard the words through the lens of my childhood theology. What I heard was a list of things that I wanted and needed God to do for me – feed me, forgive me, deliver me, keep me away from those people who hurt me. The structure of the prayer was broken down into categories of prayer petitions that provided a model for how all of my prayers should be spoken. And doesn’t it stand to reason, that when a model is provided, our human nature is to deviate from the model as rebels and then feel guilty?

Today is Epiphany. A season of the church that calls us to hear the story of a group of magi - astrologers - who are asked by a fearful king Herod to find this supposed new king so that he too can worship the child. It has bugged me for years that when we tell this story through the voices of little children, dressed and carrying boxes wrapped in shiny paper, that we miss the danger. We miss that what Herod really wants is not to worship the child, but to murder him. He uses the Magi in an effort to find the child. When we only talk about the sharing of the three gifts, we miss the reality that masses of children are about to die because the leader of the country doesn’t want to lose his position.

There are moments I can pretend and contain it, and there are moments it lashes out in a harsh word or avoidance. I recognize it, but I can’t stop it. I see it. It is a huge booming voice pressing down on my head, my shoulders.

This litany is a gift to you. It is permission to simply take tomorrow as a new day, just like any other day, and to recognize that in all days the Spirit of the Holy wakes with us and walks with us, and rests with us. Whether you have grand plans for 2022 or you have abandoned the idea of fresh starts and resolutions, it is God who creates us anew again and again. It is God who completed the grand plan for us on the cross and it is God who gives a fresh start with each new breath inside each significant moment.

Throughout my childhood, an act was either a sin or it wasn’t. Being saved meant asking Jesus Christ to be your personal Lord and Savior and then not messing up moving forward. If you did mess up, you must ask for forgiveness to be safe/saved. But, as I grew in my life and faith and met new people in other denominations, my firm foundation was crumbling. Today, as I sat down to write a reflection on the upcoming text from New Year’s Day, I realized it was Matthew 25: 31-46, one of my favorites. It felt like a blatant Holy Spirit moment that I use this text to continue on with the Pondering Part 1 post.

At first, there was this idea that perhaps some actions had been mislabeled. That did a number on my heart and my head. If the church authorities were wrong about some things, then how was I to be certain they were not wrong about all things. And if I can’t be certain then it means I can’t be saved.

The commercialization of Santa has become the very opposite of what Jesus was sent to earth to do, and my resentment is growing. I feel like there has been an evangelical push to “claim Christmas back” in recent years, but this has felt like an attack on non-Christians more than a true effort to acknowledge the birth of the Christ child, so I have separated myself from this messaging.