By this we shall know that we are of the truth, and reassure our hearts before Him whenever our hearts condemn us, for God is greater than our hearts, and He knows everything. (1 John 3:20) In Lent we can comb our consciences to bring to God the sins we recognize that He has forgiven. It’s part of the bath our spirits take that David mentioned in Psalm 51:7: Wash me and I will be whiter than snow.

I have often heard someone say, “Of course I know that God has forgiven me, but I just can’t forgive myself.” When I hear those words, I know that I have said them myself until I learned that no one can forgive himself or herself; for that is the task that Jesus alone took upon himself. I believe that our sense of self forgiveness locks us in a cell of self sufficiency that is a serious shade in our spirits and prevents us from being “washed white as snow.” David hungered for that washing, as he realized that he himself had no soap that could make him clean. Instead of turning inward and hugging his sins, David looked outside himself to God, who alone could help him.

When the Apostle John wrote “By this we shall know the truth,” he was acknowledging the cleansing that we can receive when we recognize that “ God is greater than our hearts,” and that His surpassing greatness is what we are denying when we refuse to “forgive “ ourselves. The burden of guilt that results in “not forgiving ourselves” distorts our relationships and our most important relationship with God Himself. The apostle John’s insight that God is greater even than our hearts means that God is greater even than our consciences, a scary but liberating truth, as John affirms.

Linda, a friend of mine, told me this incident. She was riding in her car while her teenage son was driving, as he had just acquired his permit. He had stopped at a stop sign near their home, when he noticed the car behind him was driven by one of his friends. “Mom,” he said, “Get down! Get down!” Linda cooperated by lowering the back of her seat and sliding down so that she couldn’t be seen from the window. The boy in the other car finally recognized his friend and drove up next to the passenger side of Linda’s car. Looking from his window he smiled at Linda and said, “Hello, Mrs. Fox,”

to the chagrin of both Linda and her son.

During Lent it is good to remember that God is greater than both regrets and intentions, and the clean air of His Spirit in our spirits brings a sensation of purity and freedom that can be found nowhere else but in Christ. This is the truth.

Love in Him,

Prue

This weekend I watched an advertisement for a new kind of dog collar that contained a GPA that kept track of the dog and brought him home safely. The claim was that it was 93% effective, the first of its kind. Other collars could deliver a pain when a dog left the designated perimeter, but those also sent a pain at the dog’s return. This one hurt at leaving , but the return was painless. The ad. Proclaimed it almost perfectly kept the dog in easy distance of its owner: “Pain to leave, none to return.” The testimonials were gushing.

It certainly seemed remarkable to me, and I enjoyed watching the ad. It occurred to me that the notion “pain to leave, and pain to return” was self defeating, and very reminiscent of much of the behavior of human beings. It seems like a hopeless cycle that would naturally result in getting lost.

The Scriptures describe a different relationship for us with God. The psalmist, like us, would wander, but when he seeks a return he has hope: Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me. Do not cast me from your presence or take your Holy Spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation, and grant me a willing spirit to sustain me. (Psalm 51:10-12)

The dog collar comes with a trainer who in one session helps the dog know the new routine. Prone as the dog is to wander, he is happy to return painlessly to his yard. The pain of leaving is enough to keep him home.

In 1758 Robert Robinson wrote the hymn Come Thou Fount Of Every Blessing, which contains these lines: “Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it, prone to leave the God I love.”

It took a long time for the makers of an electronic dog collar to realize that the pain of returning would discourage the dog and fail in its design to keep him in range. The psalmist and the hymn writer knew that the gracious, forgiving God would wait for His wandering children with warmth and understanding, and without strings attached, for them to return. During Lent we can examine ourselves and return peacefully to our Lord from all the ways we may have wandered. We may wander in self examination for forty days, and our return will be an extraordinary joy without pain. The Prodigal experienced that joy.

Love in Him,

Prue

The Lord said to Moses, “Chisel out two stone tablets like the first ones, and I will write on them the words that were on the first tablet, which you broke.” (Exodus 34:1)

The Ten commandments are the backbone of the nation of Israel. They were God’s tool for forming a slave population into a nation of laws of their own. The Ten Commandments etched in stone were carried in the ark of the Covenant, and occupied the most holy place, first in the Tabernacle, and later in the Temple.

Those stone tablets, though, were the second edition of God’s word. The first edition had been shattered by Moses when he saw the calf idol being worshiped by God’s people, including Aaron, Moses’ own brother. In spite of such an egregious departure, the Lord ordered the stones to be replaced exactly as they were written first. He didn’t change a word of the first stones. The transgressions of the people did not change God’s purpose or His saving plan for them. It was perhaps the first inkling to Moses and the people, of God’s constancy and perseverance which would one day lead to the cross of Christ

God didn’t instruct one of His gifted craftsmen to carve the Commandments, but He wrote them Himself—twice. The second set was the one that was finally placed into the ark. The second set of tablets proved God’s immutable decision to be committed to His people, the all powerful God committed to a barely emerging nation.

When everyone except Moses, and perhaps Joshua, perceived God as merely one God among many, God remained constant in delivering the ten commandments. These, along with “The Greatest commandment,” were the glue that held the nation together : Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and with all your strength. ( Deuteronomy 6:5)

In a way, Jesus is like the second set. He revealed the second message of God’s constancy in the midst of humanity’s sins, and he sealed it with his blood. The author of Hebrews wrote, Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever. (Hebrews 13:8) Jesus, as his Father God, is eternally committed to his people.

Love in Him,

Prue

My Grandfather’s dairy farm was on a gently sloping hill rising from the Susquehanna River in New York State. As a child I loved to visit the farm and my grandparents. From their back porch where we sometimes ate breakfast or dinner, there was a sweeping view all the way to the river.

Many years after Grandpa died and Grandma had sold the farm, I visited the village and drove past the farm. All the land between the house and the river had been sold separately, and it was now filled with mobile homes and campers. Gone entirely was the view to the river, and there was heavy litter where there had once been a pasture. I was actually depressed when I saw what had happened to the farm. I called my siblings and we commiserated on the phone, but it didn’t help. I felt as if I had experienced a great loss, though in fact I had never owned the farm or lived there for any great length of time.

“This day is holy to the Lord. Do not grieve, for the joy of the Lord is your strength.” (Nehemiah 8:10) In Nehemiah’s time, some of the people of Israel had returned from exile to rebuild the destroyed temple of Solomon. When Ezra and Nehemiah read to them the long forgotten scriptures, they began to weep at the realization of what they had lost. It was then that Nehemiah spoke these famous words to the people. God gave His people the simple direction in which to look for joy. He made it clear that joy itself belonged to Him, and that He gave it generously delights to share it. It is hard, though, to let go of our griefs, and so we sometimes miss the joy that waits for us to ask for it.

to those who would seek it in Him instead of in the world. Joy is part of God’s character, and He

Joy is part of the contract that God makes with His people. It is healing, renewing joy that only He provides. God desires us to ask for joy, because He knows that such a request means that we have come to know Him. When I remembered the farm, I knew that it had left a bright goodness in me that would outlive the farm itself, and continue to deliver joy. Jesus said, “Ask and you will receive, and your joy will be complete. (John 16:24). Joy is a contract with God. He never fails to deliver.

Love in Him,

Prue

Jacob deceived his father in order to receive the birthright. He deceived his uncle Laban in escaping after managing to have Laban’s sheep bear spotted or speckled young. He deceived his brother Esau on Jacob’s return and went in the opposite direction from the one they had agreed upon. Deceit was almost characteristic of Jacob, except in his relationship with God. Jacob became “Israel.”

When Jesus saw Nathaniel approaching, he said of him, “This is a true Israelite, in whom is no deceit.. . . Jesus said,You believe because I told you that I saw you under the fig tree. You shall see greater things than this. I tell you the truth, you shall see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man. (John 1:47)

More than any other disciple, Nathaniel was identified by Jesus, with the patriarch most known for being a trickster. Jesus, however, saw in Nathaniel, the exact opposite: a man without guile. Jesus actually places himself in Jacob’s place when Jesus describes the ladder of angels ascending and descending upon himself.

I believe that Jesus saw in Nathaniel the new Israel, the redeemed nation,

even before his own death and resurrection. He saw a cleansed nation, and a people who could openly receive the Spirit of God into their lives. This encounter with Nathaniel is a window into Jesus’ understanding of his task on earth and beyond. Nathaniel exhibited the simplicity that made it possible for him to exclaim, “Rabbi, you are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!” (John 1:49)

The gift of Jesus, the “son of Man.” is an immeasurable gift. In almost every verse of the Gospels he provides a window into the other world of human life, a life He bridges to the God of all creation. This whole incident reveals much about the human heart as well as the heart of God in Christ. Clearly the people that Jesus addressed were hungry for the appearance of the Messiah; clearly these are Jesus’ chosen ones, because they believed in Jesus as a representative of God Himself. The twelve that Jesus chose almost recognized God in Jesus. True “Israelites” still recognize Him today.

Love in Him,

Prue

“He is light without any falsehood, and with that truth, He confounded and destroyed the lie that the Devil told to Eve, with which he broke up the road to Heaven, and the Truth brought the pieces together again, and cemented them with His blood.” ( St. Catherine of Siena,“The Dialogue”)

ST. Catherine of Siena (1347-1380) is a doctor of the Catholic church. She was only six years old when she received a vision of Christ enthroned, and it was the beginning of a life of Christian devotion. She published the “Dialogue” in 1370,and was believed to be a saint in her own lifetime.

In her writing Catherine drew strong word pictures of both Jesus and His Father God, one of which is that Jesus is Truth itself, and that His very existence makes possible our forgiveness and reconciliation with God from the fall of Adam and Eve. Many of her words parallel Scripture: “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.” (John 8:12), and, I am the way, the truth and the life. . . No one comes to the Father except through me.” (John 14:6). Catherine gathered Jesus’ sayings into a context that casts light on scripture without distorting it. She was mostly illiterate, and produced her book through dictation to a secretary. She lived in a turbulent time for the church and for nations, as well as from the occurrence of plague that just before her birth had taken the lives of 80,000 citizens of the city of Siena, Italy. The city never recovered, and today its population is about 53,000. Catherine was born a twin, but her twin sister did not survive.

Reading Catherine’s “Dialogue” with God is like hearing a father talk to His child about the Biblical Jesus, and the lives of those who believe in Him, as well as the lives who do not find that Truth.: “I have told thee that I have made a bridge of my Word, my only begotten Son, and this is the truth: I have created man to my own image and similitude in order that he might have Eternal Life, and might partake of Me, and taste my supreme and eternal sweetness and goodness.”

The picture of Jesus as a bridge to God seems meaningful to me. I experience the need for a bridge and it is a welcome thought that at communion we approach a Bridge which leads to God Himself. The Bridge is steady and firm and holds the promise of Eternity.

Love in Him,

Prue

One day Jesus was quite tired. He had been walking with his disciples for the better part of the morning, and seeing a well at about noon, he sat down near it and let his disciples go to the nearby town to get food for them all.

This is the story of Jesus at the Samaritan well, where he met a single person, a woman, to whom he asked for a drink of water from her jar. The unfolding of this story reverberates with other stories of previous encounters at a well. The servant of Abraham waited at a well to encounter a woman , Rebekah, chosen by God , to be the wife of Isaac, Abraham’s son. (Genesis 24) Jacob arrived at a well in time to see Rachel bring her sheep to be watered. He fell in love with her on the spot, and eventually married her. (Genesis 29) Moses stopped at a well in Midian where he helped seven girls to water their sheep, and was given the oldest one for his bride. (Exodus 2:16-21)

Jesus was tired when he watched a woman approach the well. She was from the Samaritan village of Sychar. When she approached, Jesus asked her for a drink of water and she responded : “You are a Jew, and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?” ( John 4:9) Jesus responded with a declaration he had never made to anyone else at that time: “ If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.” (John 4:10) In their conversation the woman spoke of her expectation of the coming of the Messiah. Jesus declared, “I, the one speaking to you—am he.” (John4:26) At these words the woman returned to Sychar and reported that she had met someone who might be the Messiah. The response was large as the townspeople came out to see for themselves. Jesus spoke with them, and they said ,”Now we have heard for ourselves and we know that this man really is the Savior of the world.” (John 4:42)

Of all the places where Jesus preached and talked, this little village in Samaria is the only one where no mention is made of miracles. There is no healing, no changing water to wine, no multiplying food, yet Jesus stayed two more days with these people. Jesus saw that they believed he was from God on the basis of his own words. In some ways, they could be called the very first church. Even before his death and resurrection, Jesus had a glimpse of his bride, and people are still coming to hear his words.

Love in Him,

Prue

“I’m a West Texas girl, and if I know anything, I know that you never, ever, pick up a snake by its tail, and when I read that in the Bible, (Exodus 4:4) I knew that it was really God speaking to Moses, and I believed.” These were the words of Ellen, a young woman who spoke to a group in our church in Houston, Texas several years ago and I never forgot them. The audience laughed, but she insisted that this was the moment of her conversion.

Moses’ encounter at the burning bush with God there on mount Horeb, as it is written in Exodus, is the first known contact between God and His people after four hundred years of silence. It is the beginning of a deep and intimate relationship between God and Moses, that embraces the whole of the the people of Israel, and their liberation from slavery. The Exodus meant the freeing of a whole nation of people, not free to self-will, but a particular freedom of relationship with their God who they knew as the God of their ancestors: Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. When God told Moses how to approach the leaders of the enslaved nation, He told Moses to invoke the patriarchs, for they were even then the names that gave identity to all the people.

Everything God does is entirely new, and in the Exodus this was a struggle at first for Moses, and almost always for the people he was to lead: This, said the Lord, is so that they may believe that the Lord the God of their fathers—the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob—has appeared to you.” (Exodus 4:5)

Believing in God through believing in Christ is the message of Christians from the time of Jesus speaking to his disciples: “The work of God is this: to believe in the one He has sent.” (John 6:29) God gave Moses “signs” by which His people could believe that Moses was truly in touch with their ancestral God.

When Jesus gave the Holy Spirit to people, he made it possible for them to believe and enter into a close relationship with his Father God. This Holy Spirit moved Ellen to grasp the truth of Scripture when she read it in the account of Moses’ talk with God, Thousands of years after the events of the Exodus, a young American girl experienced God, not in a burning bush, but in reading the Scripture of Moses and the Lord. He came to her as He comes to us, bridging the gap of time and space and entering our lives, that we may believe .

Love in Him,

Prue