🦁 Lent 1-1

Readings: Psalm 25:1-10; Daniel 9:1-14; 1 John 1:3-10.

Reflection

Good morning. My name is Tim Trouble. I am broadcasting from Sacramento, California. Today's readings come to us from Psalm 25, verses 1 to 10. Daniel Chapter nine, verses 1 to 14. And first, John, Chapter one verses 3 to 10. Then the Psalm today is titled Teach Me Your Paths. This is a prayer or Psalm of David where he's lifting Talk about lifting up his soul to God. Let me not be put to shame what not only exalt over me reason asking God for his protection and go on and make knowed me your ways or Lord teach me your powers. And this is this is a good prayer for all of us. Even today. It is to remember to take that time, to listen to that still small voice. God generally does not do things in a big, large, bold way. 

It is a still small voice. I've heard it called A Whisper of the Wind. There you go. It's something that we need to take time every day. What you do? Listening. Hear the first formation. And when we get done with the podcast, take a moment. Open your heart, your mind. Talk to God for a couple of minutes and see what he is asking you to do for him in the reading. And Daniel so, Daniel, this is Daniel the lion's den and this is Darius. The meat. Some of the is the son of the meal was made king of the realm of the Chaldeans. So this is wild of Israel. The Israelites were being held. They've been defeated by the Chaldeans. They were in slavery and so we've had the preachings and teachings about Jerusalem from the Prophet Jeremiah. And Daniel is the one who has the Lord has told it will be give him a timeframe. So it would be 70 years. 

But then Daniel turns to God in chapter three. I turn my face to the word God's seeking Him by prayer, pleas for mercy with fasting and sackcloth and ashes. And that was a very popular way. That's the right word. But that was the way that people were in mourning when they wanted to make themselves lesser. It would do that. So they would they wouldn't eat. They put on the sackcloth, which exactly what would they wear? Sack And they would cover themselves with ashes. And so he his dropping himself before God. He's coming in a very penitent, very submissive heart to God. And he's asking God to have mercy on Israel. And at the end in verse 14, therefore, the Lord kept ready the calamity and has brought in has brought it upon us for the Lord, our God is righteous in all the works. He has done, and we have not obeyed his voice. And that's a very, very strong statement. And that is something that even today that means something to us because we need to listen to God. We need to listen to what he wants for us, and we need to obey the rule, the rules that God has set forth for us and are reading from the book of First John. Oh, this is called Walking in the Light. And again, this is a discussion about being in the light with Christ. The Holy Spirit has come down that Jesus is the blood of Jesus cleanses us from all our sins, and it reminds us that we've said we have no sin, we deceive ourselves. And that is a very true statement. All of us, every single one of them myself. And I don't care who you are, everyone, we don't do things right on a regular basis. It doesn't have to be huge, you know, murdering someone. You know all that to your genocide, all that kind of stuff. This is just not obeying what God wants us to do. And it's doesn't work for a lot of us. It's just the simple things. Life as we live. It is difficult. You know, you the guy that cut you off in traffic, you know, somebody, the people that don't behave themselves and you sit there in lines and you're at work or whatever, you have that coworker and a person in your unit and you're just like, Ooh, those are things because we are to love our neighbor as ourselves. And that is incredibly difficult and is something we need to remind ourselves of on a daily basis. And to walk in the light of the Lord is to love your neighbor, love everyone around you, and take care of each other. So this is talking in light. And he says, If we confess our sins. So this is where we come to prayer. Remember, we in the season of Lent right now that is dependent penitential season. So confess that we've seen that we've things we have in the Book of Common Prayer that we use in the Episcopal Church. We we use the phrase for things we have done in the things we have left undone or things we have not done. And that is a very, very profound statement. Things we did, things we should have done, things we didn't do. I will confess our sins, God's mercy and God's grace is omnipotent. God forgives everyone for everything when you asked him to. 

And that is an incredibly powerful statement. There's a lot of us, you'll hear me talk quite frequently about moral injury and this right here. This speaks directly to that. As a medic, I've talked about this before. We had to do triage and I we called it playing God because I did I had I got there and I had to decide who, you know, who's salvageable, who's saleable, who's not still, who's going to take so many of my resources. I can't treat other patients and you let them go. 

That is not how we're brought up. That's not how we value life. And then to turn around and say, well, you're black, your red black are the ones that are not going to make it reds or the immediate yellows or the delayed patient greens. You're walking wounded. So when I treat someone in the block, that hurts. Maybe not at that moment because I'm so focused on why I got to do it comes back to you, trust me. So here we have this beautiful, beautiful passage that tells us that if we ask God if we confess our sins, He is faithful and just forgive us and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. So that's it. God forgives us. So bear that in mind today as we go through, I said, This is a season of Lent, the penitential season. God loves us and God forgives us always for everything. Amen.