904 Washington St SE, Olympia, WA 98501
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April 2025
We are now three weeks, approximately, from Easter. Jerusalem is within our sight, and the cross looms larger and larger, the closer we get. We have traveled these last few weeks of Lent, attempting to make time to examine the condition of our heart. Our saying yes to God through the Holy One, Jesus Christ, is not just an affirmation of our mind, or our spirit, but it also has to do with our heart. When those three elements of who we are: mind, body, and spirit, interconnect, God’s Spirit releases us and unleashes us out into the world as these wonderful, often misguided, living works-in-progress. Our faith journeys are more than giving God our intellectual okey-doke. It also involves pushing aside the walls we build up around our hearts for self-protection and allowing ourselves to be vulnerable, open, and free to let God heal us, challenge us, free us, and transform us, from those things that would enslave us, and/or keep us chained and twisted up in.
One of my favorite songs from the many summers I have spent with young people at Camp Bethel is, “All Things New.” The lyrics, I think, reflect some of the things we discover, when we take an inventory of our heart conditions. It doesn’t mean that our heart is either in this condition or that. Our lives, our conditions, are never one or the other. They are this complex mix of good, beautiful and lovely as well as complicated, broken, ugly and yuck! Yet, as we get closer and closer to holy week, and the shadow of the cross grows larger and larger, the words of this song, speaks louder and louder for me, and maybe, just maybe, for you as well:
Come broken and weary; come battered and bruised, my Jesus makes all things new.
Come lost and abandoned, come blown by the wind; he’ll bring you back home again.
Rise up, O you sleeper, awake. The light of the dawn is upon you
Rise up, O you sleeper, awake. He makes all things new. All things new.
Come burning with shame; come frozen with guilt, my Jesus, he loves you still, loves you still.
Rise up, O you sleeper, awake. The light of the dawn is upon you.
Rise up, O you sleeper awake. He makes all things new; He makes all things new.
The world was good, the world is fallen, the world will be redeemed.
The world was good, the world is fallen, the world will be redeemed
So hold on to the promise; the stories are true, that Jesus makes all things new
(The dawn is upon you)
Rise up, O you sleeper, awake. The light of the dawn is upon you
Rise up, O you sleeper, awake. He makes all things new. He makes all things new.
He makes all things new, all things new!
We are on the verge of something new, beautiful and redeemed. You and I, no matter the conditions of our hearts, those conditions are redeemable. You and I are valued, and found worthy of God’s grace, love and redemption. The how and why is tied up in the mystery of sacrifice, suffering, and love that the cross of Christ represents. Instead of a symbol of shame, guilt and unworthiness, it becomes this beacon of faith, hope and love, for all and forever. That is what we are heading toward. That is where our Lenten journey will take us. It still will be painful. It still demands sacrifice. It still hurts. But…but…that glorious Sunday, it’s-a-coming.
And when it comes… when it arrives, Blessings and Joy!
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Humble over Hype!
Pastor Mark (Rev)
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