Greetings in the name of our Lord. I am in one of those times in my life where I should be just freaking out, panicking, stressed to the max!!! However, I am not. I am actually pretty calm and relaxed. See my goal was to have all seven Lent sermons wrote by Ash Wednesday so I would know exactly how the entire series fit together. It is less than a week away and I do not even have my Ash Wednesday sermon wrote yet. I am behind on visits, and have two big events in March that are going to require a lot of work as well. In my mind, I think I have every right to be freaking out. However, after six and a half years of constantly feeling behind and buried under a giant to do list, I think I am finally starting to realize everything always gets done. Now I am not saying everything always gets done to the very best ability it could, but nonetheless, it always works out. I spent my entire college career writing papers, studying for tests, and finishing projects at the very last possible second. Instead of staying home and doing homework, I would go out with friends and then spend all night finishing homework instead of sleeping. At the seminary, I just plan on being in the cafeteria until three or four in the morning every night of finals week. No matter how hard I try to work ahead and get stuff done ahead of time, there is always something that gets pushed back until the last possible minute. So like I said, after six years of this, with great grades in both college and the seminary, I am learning maybe this feeling in not worth freaking out about. I mean honestly, I think I get less work done when I am worried about how much I have to do, instead of just getting busy and working on part of it. I will get Ash Wednesday sermon done tomorrow. My "day off" is really just a day to catch up. Then hopefully Saturday I can get Lent 2 sermon done. I also have a sermon for Sunday March 9th. So if I can get three sermons done in the next week, then I should be able to stay at least two weeks ahead of the game. If I write two sermons a week, I will be done with them by the third week of Lent. Now in reality, most likely in six weeks I will be writing about how I still don't have my Maundy Thursday sermon wrote, but we will see. As long as I can keep up with all of my normal weekly duties, and stay at least one week ahead of schedule, I will survive Lent.
Things around here are pretty normal. I am still doing two Bible Studies a week, although I have an additional one today because Pastor is even farther behind than I am so I offered to cover for him. He is stressed and freaking out a little bit, but after the week he has had, I don't blame him. I am teaching confirmation and high school Sunday school every week. I am helping with Bible Bowl every week, and actually led the entire thing last week. I have had Movie nights the past two weeks for the high schoolers and the college students. The students and myself went to SkyZone last Saturday. It is an indoor trampoline complex. There is a dodge ball court with trampolines as the floor, dunk lanes with trampolines, foam pits to jump into, and then a giant trampoline floor for free jumping. It was pretty awesome, but an extremely good workout. We have also had three funeral this month. Two that we attended and one that we were in charge of. We have had about ten meetings this month and then several other church activities as well. I love how active this church is, but it certainly does require much more time than a small country church that has services on Sunday and maybe a Bible study once a week. Being busy is good though.
I had to laugh that I had to go all the way back to November to find the last Psalm devotion I had posted. I have started writing more again so I am ahead on those! Small victories in life are still victories. Here is the one I wrote one Psalm 8 most likely back in November. I hope to remind myself no matter how busy I get, posting on here is actually a good break for me and another way to remind myself everyday is a gift from the Good Lord.
Psalm 8 verses 3 and 4
In verses three and four, King David is comparing humans to the rest of creation. He specifically uses the stars and the moon. He is looking at the heavens and has a realization. Basically King David is staring up and he sees millions of twinkling stars contrast against the back splash of the dark night sky. This is one of the reasons I love to go camping out in the middle of nowhere. Out in the pitch black wilderness, where there are no other lights is the best place to truly see this wonderment that David is describing. I remember when we went to Canyonlands National Park, we drove out on this back road path far away from any campgrounds or buildings. Then we got out of the van, hiked about ten minutes away from the road and found a really neat little “cave”. I don’t even know how to describe it, but you walk into a rock formation that is basically a four walled rock room, except it has no ceiling. You walk in through a hole in the front and then we all just laid on our backs in the cool sand of the southwest desert and looked up. It was so dark in there you could barely see your own hands right in front of your face. However, since there was no top to the rock formation, when you looked up all you could see were stars. I had never seen so many stars in my life. It looked like they were stacked on top of each other they were so close together. They filled the sky and it was truly beautiful. After seeing such an amazing sight, I understand what David is really going through in this psalm. When you see such a huge, powerful, bewildering part of creation, you feel pretty small. Even I, standing over six feet tall and well over two hundred pounds, felt tiny. I was no bigger than the specs of sand I was laying on. In the relativity of the entire expanse of the sky that surrounds all of creation including the humongous earth we live on, I am nothing of importance. When looking at those uncountable stars in the sky, if one all of a sudden disappeared, I would have never noticed. Ten of them could have all just gone away and from where I was looking up at them, it wouldn’t have even caught my attention. So as I lay there feeling as small as a grain of sand, I realized in the whole scheme of things I am like a single star. In my mind God sitting in heaven looking down at His creation sees billions of people covering the face of the earth He created. So if as I am looking up, I cannot see a single star disappear because the rest of them still have my attention, doesn’t that mean as He is looking down, He cannot see a single individual disappear because the rest of them would still have His attention? What is man that you are mindful of him? This is what David asks and it makes sense. Compared to the greatness of the stars what does one little man have to offer? Then to make it even more worrisome, just as you lose sight of a single star because you are looking at the whole sky, how can one single man matter in the scheme of all humanity? If our God was just any old god, who sat on His throne in heaven looking down with human eyes at humanity we could most likely feel this way. However, we do not just have any old god, we have the one true God, God Almighty, All-Powerful, All-Present, All-Knowing God! He does not look down from heaven with human eyes, looking at humanity not seeing the individual. No, He is all present, always with us, knows our troubles, our fears, our worries, our joys. He knows everything about us even the number of hairs on our head. Additionally, He sent His Son to die for us to cleanse us of our sins. But again, when you see the sky and how vast it is completely filled with stars, you have to wonder why would he do such a thing for something so little and unimportant as me? The answer is because He loves you as His dear son or daughter. He cares about you, and sent His Son to redeem you so you would always be His precious child in His tender care. So no matter how little or unimportant you feel, or if you feel like you are just one in a crowd, not special or unique, remember that Your God who created the stars, created you too. He knitted you together in your mother’s womb before you were born. He made you special and unique and then to make it even more special He made you His through the water and Word of baptism. When you think about all of this it makes sense that David would end this psalm by proudly and boldly stating, “O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!” Amen.
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