Author: littleflatrockchurch

“How beautifully leaves grow old,” wrote 19th-century essayist John Burroughs. “How full of light and color are their last days.”

Society doesn’t think highly of old age. Beauty products tout the supposed virtues of maintaining a youthful appearance. Older adults’ wisdom, born of much life experience, is often disparaged, ignored or not sought. But God says this about the righteous, whose lives are rooted in him: “In old age they still produce fruit; they are always green and full of sap, showing that the LORD is upright” (Psalm 92:14-15, NRSV).

The aging leaves of autumn can prompt us to look for beauty in the seniors among us, to notice the light and color that still abound. From all the fruit they still produce — service, prayer, love — may we learn about living faithfully until our own last days.

—Heidi Mann

Rusty Stevens, a ministry leader in Virginia, described trying to finish mowing the lawn before dinnertime. His 6-year-old son darted in front of him and grabbed the mower handle. But when Stevens stopped pushing, the mower soon stopped.

The busy dad fought the urge to tell his son to get out of his way and instead offered to help. Stevens began pushing again, leaning over and walking awkwardly to accommodate his eager assistant. Although the mowing commenced, it was slow-going and not as efficient as the solo effort.

That’s when Stevens realized a ministry parallel: “This is the way my heavenly Father allows me to ‘help’ him build his kingdom!” The church leader pictured God busy “seeking, saving and transforming the lost, and there I was, with my weak hands ‘helping.’”

Although God surely can tackle all the work of ministry and evangelism alone, he “chooses to stoop gracefully to allow me to co-labor with him,” said Stevens. What a blessing and privilege that God lets us work alongside him!

As a young boy, J. Ellsworth Kalas had to visit the Mayo Clinic for tests. His parents, knowing their son was safe in the hospital overnight, slept at a nearby hotel. But Kalas was so lonely and scared that a nurse called his folks. Kalas, who later became a pastor, recalled what it was like to have his father arrive.

“I remember his dressing me there in the darkness,” he said. “Then I remember getting on a streetcar, sitting way at the back as we rode to the hotel. He held me very close to him, his long, ungainly arm wrapped around me. And the little boy who had been so frightened was now at peace.”

We all face trials that can seem overwhelming. “How good, then, to draw deeply on the resources of God!” Kalas said. “In him there is a peace which is greater than the trouble. How good, indeed, to burrow into a place of security, and to feel an arm wrapping strong about us and to know that it is the arm of our heavenly Father.”

Today is Ash Wednesday, a date on the Christian calendar which marks the beginning of Lent.” Ash Wednesday is about preparation, and the beginning of preparation at that. All of the Lenten season is focused upon preparation for Easter. Ash Wednesday is about how we can begin those preparations. It is ‘to make a right beginning of repentance,’ as the Book of Common Prayer puts it. We are reminded of ‘the need which all Christians continually have to renew their repentance and faith.’ Ash Wednesday is the day when the journey toward Easter begins.” (BillyGraham.org)

Lent is a time to fix our eyes on Jesus and our own need for His sacrifice, to remember that we are but dust, but that it His great love that makes us people of hope and an eternal future. It is a time for examination of ourselves, as we acknowledge our sin and our complete inability to save ourselves. And it is a time to remember the Savior, full of grace and truth, who acknowledges the depth of our sin, but Whose love is even wider and higher and longer and deeper than that sin. How fitting that in 2024, the beginning of Lent falls on the observance of Valentine’s Day.

May we acknowledge and turn away from our own great sin and turn our faces toward the greater love of God.

Have you ever neared the completion of a jigsaw puzzle, only to discover that a piece or two is missing? That’s an apt visual for what it’s like to live without God. Blaise Pascal, a 17^th-century philosopher, observed: “There is a God-shaped vacuum in the heart of each man which cannot be satisfied by any created thing but only by God the Creator, made known through Jesus Christ.”

Centuries earlier, St. Augustine proclaimed “Thou hast made us for thyself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in thee.” And in the Old Testament, the writer of Ecclesiastes expounded on the meaninglessness of earthly striving and material pursuits. Only God’s Spirit can fill our emptiness and satisfy our eternal longings.

“I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full,” says Jesus in John 10:10 (NIV). He alone provides the solution for emptiness. What comfort to be filled with — and to find our fulfillment in — our Savior!

If you’ve ever kept a gratitude journal, you know they’re fairly easy to fill. Edward King, an English bishop known for working with the poor, may not have had a fancy journal. But these words evoke such a list: “I will thank God … for the glory of the thunder, for the mystery of music, the singing of birds and the laughter of children. … for the awe of the sunset, the beauty of flowers, the smile of friendship and the look of love … for the leaves on the trees in spring and autumn, for the witness of the leafless trees through the winter, teaching us that death is sleep and not destruction, for the sweetness of flowers and the scent of hay. Truly, oh Lord, the earth is full of thy riches!”

King concludes: “And yet how much more I will thank and praise God for the strength of my body enabling me to work, for the refreshment of sleep, for my daily bread, for the days of painless health, for the gift of my mind and the gift of my conscience, for his loving guidance of my mind ever since it first began to think, and of my heart ever since it first began to love.”

May we also overflow with gratitude galore this week and always to our Father of heavenly lights, the Giver of every good and perfect gift.

Missionary and author Elisabeth Elliot says our sovereign God is worthy of unquestioning obedience in matters both large and small. Such trust yields mighty results, she adds, providing Christians with rest, peace and guidance.

“God is God,” says Elliot. “Because he is God, he is worthy of my trust and obedience. I will find rest nowhere but in his holy will that is unspeakably beyond my largest notions of what he is up to.”

About the role of obedience in prayer, Elliot asks, “Does it make sense to pray for guidance about the future if we are not obeying in the thing that lies before us today? How many momentous events in Scripture depended on one person’s seemingly small act of obedience! Rest assured: Do what God tells you to do now, and, depend upon it, you will be shown what to do next.”

While on a red-eye flight from California to Philadelphia on a stormy night, evangelist Tony Campolo sat near someone who wanted to chat. Upon learning that Campolo was a Christian, the seatmate said, “I believe that going to heaven is like going to Philadelphia,” meaning you can get there by various modes of transportation. “We all end up at the same place.”

When Campolo woke from a nap and saw that the descending airplane was circling Philly in the fog, he told his neighbor, “I’m glad the pilot doesn’t agree with your theology.” Confused, the man asked what Campolo meant.

“The people in the control tower are giving instructions to the pilot: ‘Coming north by northwest, three degrees, you’re on beam, don’t deviate from the beam.’ I’m glad the pilot’s not saying, ‘There are many ways into the airport. There are many approaches we can take.’ I’m glad the pilot’s saying, ‘There’s only one way we can land this plane, and I’m going to stay with it.’”