March 8

Listen to this meditation

 

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Psalm 24, 29;

Jesus says in Mark, chapter 8: “If you want to follow me, deny yourselves, take up you cross, and follow me. If you want to save your life, you’ll lose it, and if you lose your life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, you’ll save it.” 

What do you think when you hear that? 

My first thought is of the heroes of the faith—larger than life, bathed in light and adorning stained-glass windows—like the apostles. As a boy, I learned the stories of the apostles—both truth and pious legend—from Sunday School teachers, and I was amazed by their courage and faithfulness, fascinated by their sometimes awful and exotic deaths. And I was secretly relieved that as an Episcopalian in the U.S., I wasn’t likely to have to choose to follow Jesus as they did. 

So, as followers of Jesus, here and now, how do we hear and respond to this invitation and challenge that he sets before us? “Deny yourself, take up the cross, and follow…Lose your life in order to find it.” 

A fertile area for Lenten self-examination is to take a good, honest look at how you use your time. That doesn’t sound very dramatic or heroic, but how we use our time is how we are using our lives. How we spend our time is how we are laying down our lives, because what is time but the measuring of our lives? And to use our time well, to use it for the good, to offer it to God’s glory and for the sake of the Kingdom of heaven is a real and on-going spiritual struggle where—in spite of, or because of, all the technology available—there never seems to be enough time.

I’m blessed to know an older man who’s a deeply committed Christian. Very successful in business before he retired, he once told me, “I spent a lot of years climbing the ladder of success, only to find it was leaning against the wrong building.”Trying to “save” his life, he was losing it. 

During Lent, I hope you’ll stop and take time…offer God the time…and look up from your life and consider who and what you’re following. Is your ladder leaning on that which can never give real life? Or are you trusting in the One who is the Lord and giver of life?