September Reflection

Jesus told them a parable about the need to pray always and not lose heart. -Luke 18:1

All too quickly another summer has past. 

As September comes, we trade in the lazy summer days for the the busier cool days of the fall. 

Although we do this every year, I’ve begun to wonder if there isn’t something insidious about our attitude. 

Something that set Christians and the Jewish people apart from their ancient contemporaries, was their understand of time. The Romans, the Egyptians, the Babylonians, etc., they all thought of time as a never-ending cycle. Each season followed upon the next, in the same order as the year before. Each year there was the cycle of death and new births to replace the deceased. Each year the Nile flooded in the spring, the days got longer in the summer, and so on. 

For the Jewish people, though, time was not a never-ending cycle. Time had a beginning; when God made the heavens and the earth. Time also had an ending; when God would bring all things to fulfillment.

The Christian people took this even farther, asserting that in Jesus’ life, death and resurrection time had actually been fulfilled. Early Christians proclaimed that, in Jesus the old age had ended, and God had begun a new one. As Jesus had proclaimed, “The Kingdom of God is at hand;” so his followers insisted, that in the resurrection, that Kingdom had come. 

We’ve lost this view of time to our own detriment.

In fact, the way we treat time today, is no different than the ancient pagans. We treat time as just a never-ending series of predictable cycles. We don’t believe that history has a point.

And is it any wonder we’re struggling?

When the seasons are just something to get through until the next one arrives, when time is just something to pass; all our mission will ever be is just survival. 

Our mission will only be survival, because time has no other point than its passage. If all time does is pass, the most we can expect of time, is to get through the passage of it for as long as possible.

In other words, the way we think about the seasons, about time, about history; it affects how we live out our life together as the church. When all time is, is just a series of never-ending cycles, all our mission will ever be is to get through the time as long as we can, to survive. 

We live like this, and then we wonder why we’re just barely getting along!

Listen, I know I am getting a little esoteric here, but I want us to stop and think about our assumptions, the way we act without even thinking. I want us to do this because Jesus taught us to pray always and not lose heart. 

The longer I’ve been a pastor, the more I’ve learned that we don’t lose heart in the big battles, but in the every day little compromises.

Sisters and brothers, God has a mission for you that is more than just surviving, and the same is true for Faith and Trinity.

Let us pray always that God would renew this conviction in us, that God would keep us from losing heart.