Calling on Christ

You may notice I posted a couple of links there on the right side.  One is the link for the Daily Lectionary Readings from the Revised Common Lectionary as posted on the PCUSA website.  The other two are sites for daily prayer that I have found helpful in my journey of faith over the last year.  One is an audio feed and the other you read through as you sit at your computer (or print it out and read it that way).  Anyway, I hope that you find one, two or even all three of those links helpful as you journey with Christ and we journey together in this Lenten season.


Tonight, as I sat down at my computer, I was feeling guilty #1 - that I have not posted nor encouraged anyone else to post since Ash Wednesday, which now is officially a week ago and #2 - that, even though I kept myself from giving in to temptation and rescinding my Lenten discipline of fasting from TV programs during the week, it's still after midnight and I'm just sitting down to read and pray and listen and blog.  Now, when I'm about two seconds from falling asleep and kicking myself for having to get up in 5 hours.  (Yes, pastors are people too!  In fact, many times, we're all TOO human.)  So, as I sat down to the computer and pulled up sacredspace.ie, the prayer opened with the words: At any time of the day or night we can call on Jesus.  He is always waiting, listening for our call.  What a wonderful blessing.  No phone needed, no e-mails, just a whisper.  Amen to that!  A blessing indeed.


Sometimes I think we are too hard on ourselves, and then there's times when we let ourselves off way too easy.  There's a balance, or at least there needs to be.  On the one hand, we should not (as the Apostle Paul says) go on sinning so that grace may abound.  It was tempting tonight to hop online and see what happened with Chuck this last week, or to find out what the Bachelorettes really had to say about Jake.  I was working on cleaning the kitchen anyway, and that's my routine, after all (TV programs online while I clean or fold laundry), and surely God would forgive me for making that choice this once... It would have been really easy to excuse myself from my own self-imposed Lenten discipline, but I didn't.  I put on some worship music and cleaned away.  And truth be told, if you know me at all, you know it wouldn't ultimately have been that easy for me to excuse myself.  I'm good at guilt; I hang on to it like a security blanket sometimes.  More often than not, I'm pretty hard on myself.


Tonight, Emilie Griffin asks the question (Small Surrenders, p.32) whether or not we accept the idea of a God who is incredibly gracious and merciful and comments on letting go of all judgmentalism, even of judging ourselves.  I think it's hard.  Some of us are critical in general - of others, of ourselves.  Some of us can be gracious and loving to those we know and love, or even to others who are like us, but can be really critical of others who aren't like us.  And some of us are nice, are gracious and compassionate to everyone else, except to ourselves.  As we continue our journey toward the cross of Christ, on which we see Jesus embodying the fullness of God's love and grace for each and everyone one of us, let us surrender both our critical judgments of others and our harsh critiques of ourselves and let us recognize that no one is beyond the boundaries of God's grace.