Manse Office Musings

Oscar Wilde is famously reported to have said ‘I can resist anything, except temptation.’  These are appropriate words for this season, as in February we enter the season of Lent.  It’s a time when Christians are encouraged to consider the sacrifice Jesus made in coming into the world and choosing the path to the cross.

In some traditions Christians will traditionally make some small sacrifice by giving something up for Lent. In more recent years I have noted that a number of people have taken the novel twist of not giving something up, but adding something new to their life, generally some act of service.

Of itself this is no bad thing. From time to time it helps to take stock of our lives. At times we can all slip into being overly reliant on some comfort or other. It’s only once it’s removed we realise just how reliant we’ve become. On the downside, we can become quite chuffed with ourselves when we succeed. It can be more of a test of our own strength and willpower than a time when we realise just how reliant we are on God. And it seems to me that recognising reliance on God was the key point of the temptations - would Jesus fulfil his God-given role in ways which could really have made life easy for him or would he take the harder road, the road to the cross and trust in what God had planned for him and rely on God to bring him through.

It took serious determination on Jesus’ part to follow that path that God had laid out for him. Luke tells us that Jesus made a deliberate choice to set out for Jerusalem, knowing what awaited him there. The path marked out for us may not be the same as that of Jesus, but each of us will encounter times when obedience to what God wants won’t mean taking the obvious, easier, tried-and-tested path, but placing our trust in God, trusting that he will indeed keep us safe with him.

This Lent, On Sunday mornings when I am preaching, I intend to look at some of the challenges Jesus faced on that road, from the wilderness to the cross and what we can learn from him. I pray that it will help to strengthen us on our journey of faith, and help us place our faith not on willpower but in the one who faced those challenges head on and has come through to direct us on our journey.

Grace & Peace.

Andrew