Wednesday of the Week of Reformation – Psalm 46

Psalm 46

¹God is our refuge and strength,
   a very present help in trouble.
²Therefore we will not fear though the earth gives way,
   though the mountains be moved into the heart of the sea,
³though its waters roar and foam,
   though the mountains tremble at its swelling.
Selah

⁴There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God,
   the holy habitation of the Most High.
⁵ God is in the midst of her; she shall not be moved;
   God will help her when morning dawns.
⁶ The nations rage, the kingdoms totter;
   he utters his voice, the earth melts.
⁷ The LORD of hosts is with us;
   the God of Jacob is our fortress.
Selah

⁸ Come, behold the works of the LORD,
   how he has brought desolations on the earth.
⁹ He makes wars cease to the end of the earth;
   he breaks the bow and shatters the spear;
    he burns the chariots with fire.
¹⁰ “Be still, and know that I am God.
    I will be exalted among the nations,
   I will be exalted in the earth!”
¹¹ The LORD of hosts is with us;
   the God of Jacob is our fortress.
Selah

His friends looked on with growing alarm that day in mid-April of 1521. Luther stood before the Emperor and the assembled members of the imperial nobility. He refused their demand that he disavow his writings. The Emperor was not used to being disobeyed, especially by a lowly monk. Luther could be somewhat politically obtuse. His friends grabbed him firmly by the elbow and escorted him out of the room and they just kept walking. They smiled at the guards, walked through the city gate, and came to the horses and cart which they had prepared for just such an emergency. They sent Luther out of town before he could be arrested. Somewhere outside of town, Luther’s party was surrounded, and he was taken “prisoner.”

Many people thought that was the end of Luther, but it was not. His prince, the Elector Frederick, sometimes called “the Wise” but perhaps the German is better translated “the Crafty,” had arranged for Luther to be kidnapped and brought to a secure fortress high on a hill in Saxony. It still stands and you can visit. It is called the Wartburg.

In the 16 months he spent in the Wartburg, Luther grew a beard and took on a new identity as Knight George. We even have a painting of him at the time. I have included it for you. The psalm this week repeats the phrase: “the God of Jacob is our fortress.” Those words would become the opening blast of Luther’s most famous hymn, “A Mighty Fortress is our God.” As Luther pondered God and the Reformation from that lofty perch in the Wartburg, he probably prayed and meditated upon this psalm. As a monk he recited his way through the psalter. People build fortresses like the Wartburg to defend against an enemy. Luther was safe there, at least from the emperor. But the emperor was not Luther’s only foe. To be safe from those other foes like sin, death, and devil, would take another fortress, a fortress which Luther sings about in that hymn and this psalm describes. Inside that fortress city the river of life flows. Outside is chaos and tumult. You have been brought to that fortress in your baptism and the promise of God to you. Here we may rest unmolested by the world, the devil, or anyone else. A mighty fortress is our God, a trusty shield and weapon; He helps us free from ev’ry need That hath us now o’ertaken.

Tuesday of the Week of Reformation – Revelation 14:6–7

Revelation 14:6–7

⁶Then I saw another angel flying directly overhead, with an eternal gospel to proclaim to those who dwell on earth, to every nation and tribe and language and people. ⁷And he said with a loud voice, “Fear God and give him glory, because the hour of his judgment has come, and worship him who made heaven and earth, the sea and the springs of water.”

Anyone who opens their newsfeed or watches the news on TV these days encounters a world of violence, cruelty, and war. As I write these words, the horrific images coming from the Middle East and Ukraine assault my heart. It feels like the social order of the post-world war II time is unraveling in real time. In times like this, people are often drawn to the words of John’s Apocalypse.

The author of these words, John, lived in time when emperors ruled the vast Roman state. Sometimes the emperors were good and able rulers. Augustus and Tiberius had long and stable reigns. Other emperors were unstable personally and the empire might be wracked with unrest. John wrote these words in the days of Diocletian, a particularly unstable man who lashed out at many people, including Christians.

When the emperor died a new emperor would be proclaimed. A herald would come into the community, blow a trumpet, and announce “good news – the reign of…has begun.” The Bible picks up that formula to describe Christian preaching. Paul, Peter, and the rest of the early church apostles and preachers were heralds of a new king with a twist. Instead of announcing that the old emperor had died, and a new rule had begun; they announced that Jesus had risen, and his eternal reign had begun. They used much of the same language that the heralds of a new emperor used. You might think about that when it comes time to inaugurate whoever wins this election.

That Christian proclamation has continued through the rise and fall of republics, monarchies, empires, and dictatorships. For 2000 years, Christians have gathered, heard words of absolution, participated in heaven’s feast, and been welcomed into fellowship with God himself. I make no prognostications about elections or the consequences of victories or losses in the political or international arenas. Such things will make a difference for some things in our lives, but the most important things will remain unchanged, for they are under a different lordship altogether. They belong to Christ and his gracious kingdom. Pray for our country, vote if you have not already, and rest in the assurance that the Kingdom of Christ has been proclaimed.

Monday of the Week of Reformation – Prayer for the Week

Prayer for the Week

Almighty and gracious Lord, pour out Your Holy Spirit on Your faithful people.  Keep us steadfast in Your grace and truth, protect and deliver us in times of temptation, defend us against all enemies, and grant to Your Church Your saving peace; through Jesus Christ, Your Son, our Lord, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.

When you are a Pastor, you learn that God calls all sorts of people to faith. Some are loud and brassy; others are quiet. Some are smart; others are not so intellectually gifted. Some are competent at fixing the church’s water heater, others not so much. God loves them all, so preachers had better get used to loving them all too. I have found over the years that God has a way of surprising me with people, opening my eyes to things which I, in my educated arrogance, had never imagined.

Had you seen her; you would have found her easy to overlook. I did, at first. She was not an assertive person by nature, the sort of woman who did not say much in a Bible study or voters meeting. She liked being on the altar guild, coming on Saturday to prepare the altar for worship, the sort of job that was behind the scenes. In a larger parish, I think she would have simply been one of those faces who regularly stared back at me from the pews while I preached, always there but unremarkable. This was not a very large parish. I came to know her better through her family. It was an interesting bunch which involved several early morning phone calls to help resolve crises. Her children and husband were, to put it mildly, not a terribly wholesome lot. But they managed, in large part, because she was always there for them and with them, even when they were foolish and difficult to love.

God had answered this prayer for her. She was steadfast in grace and truth. That meant loving people who were at times hard to love. A quiet person by nature, I also discovered that there was a steely and resolute devotion to the truth in this woman. She was dedicated to the truth that God loved her and her family. That meant she expected the truth from them and would settle for nothing less. She could make them squirm under that unflinching expectation. I discovered that she made an excellent presider at council meetings.

How does God answer this prayer for you? It will be different for every human life and yet behind all these blessings stands the same Jesus who is the Truth and who graciously gave himself for you and your justification.

Friday of Pentecost 21 – Matthew 22:15-22

Matthew 22:15-22

¹⁵ Then the Pharisees went and plotted how to entangle him in his words. ¹⁶ And they sent their disciples to him, along with the Herodians, saying, “Teacher, we know that you are true and teach the way of God truthfully, and you do not care about anyone’s opinion, for you are not swayed by appearances. ¹⁷ Tell us, then, what you think. Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar, or not?” ¹⁸ But Jesus, aware of their malice, said, “Why put me to the test, you hypocrites? ¹⁹ Show me the coin for the tax.” And they brought him a denarius. ²⁰ And Jesus said to them, “Whose likeness and inscription is this?” ²¹ They said, “Caesar’s.” Then he said to them, “Therefore render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” ²² When they heard it, they marveled. And they left him and went away.

The principal looked across the desk at the three students who glowered back at him. There was a great injustice at the school which they knew needed to be addressed. This was not an unfamiliar conversation for him. He had had it every few years. The faces changed, but the drama, angst, and passion of the students was consistent. As usual, their complaint had some merit, but it did not acknowledge the realities of a large, underfunded school. He would do what he could, the students would graduate, and a few years later another group would come in with a new complaint.

He loved these conversations. He was always happy to see their fire and zeal for righting a wrong, even if, in the larger scale of things, it was probably not that important. Some of this school’s best and most important graduates had sat in those chairs and glowered at him and his predecessors over the years. There was at least one state legislator who had sat in those chairs and raised issues with a principal.

“What would you do differently?” he asked. He really did want to know. He wanted to direct them toward something healthful and edifying. He wanted them to start thinking of solutions and not just their anger. He knew that frustrated anger could become a sort of habit. This passion needed to see a way to something good. The students were not entirely satisfied. They almost never were. But they grew that day, another little step toward being an adult.

The religious leaders came Jesus in this reading filled with anger and zeal. They want to destroy Jesus, to catch Him in his words. If he said they should not pay taxes, the Romans would kill him. If he said that one should pay taxes, then the zealous among his followers would abandon him, or so they hoped. Jesus, however, looks and them and loves them. He knows their malice, but He does not react in kind. He deftly turns aside their plots. “Give to Caesar that which belongs to Caesar and to God that which belongs to God,” He says. He stumped them, but He did not reject them. Later that week, for these events happened in Holy Week, Jesus died for these men who sought His ruin. He willingly endured the destruction which they intend, because he loves them and through that death he forgives their sins and ours.

Thursday of Pentecost 21 – I Thessalonians 1:1-10

I Thessalonians 1:1-10

Paul, Silvanus, and Timothy,

To the church of the Thessalonians in God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ:

Grace to you and peace.

² We give thanks to God always for all of you, constantly mentioning you in our prayers, ³ remembering before our God and Father your work of faith and labor of love and steadfastness of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ. ⁴ For we know, brothers loved by God, that he has chosen you, ⁵ because our gospel came to you not only in word, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and with full conviction. You know what kind of men we proved to be among you for your sake. ⁶ And you became imitators of us and of the Lord, for you received the word in much affliction, with the joy of the Holy Spirit, ⁷ so that you became an example to all the believers in Macedonia and in Achaia. ⁸ For not only has the word of the Lord sounded forth from you in Macedonia and Achaia, but your faith in God has gone forth everywhere, so that we need not say anything. ⁹ For they themselves report concerning us the kind of reception we had among you, and how you turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God, ¹⁰ and to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead, Jesus who delivers us from the wrath to come.

They say that to a teenager holding a hammer everything starts to look like a nail. In more academic circles, this is called confirmation bias. You and your method are looking for a certain result and you shape the data to give you the result you are expecting. I often used this passage in my New Testament classes at the university to show students how this often afflicts us in reading the Bible too. In class I had them read this letter to the Thessalonians in small groups. To each group I assigned one chapter of Thessalonians. Their task was to look for Paul’s words about the end of the world in that chapter. Every chapter in Thessalonians has some reference to the world’s end. They always found it. It is at the end, in the very last verse of the first three chapters. Then, they almost always misread it. They heard Paul speak of God’s wrath and they heard judgment in these words. But look at it carefully. Perhaps you did the same thing. The passage says that Jesus delivers us from God’s wrath. Paul is not trying to make them afraid, but to alleviate their fear.

Just as in Paul’s day, our world is very afraid of the world’s end. They imagined that God must have been very unhappy with the way things were. He would come in wrath, they imagined. Believing ourselves to be gods, our culture couches the world’s end it in terms of climate chaos, nuclear Armageddon, or perhaps some AI generated dystopian future. The outcome is the same. We are addicted to hope, however. Many of the most successful movies are superhero films in which the world is about to end but a heroic figure, a man or woman of supernatural strength or ability, saves the day, defeats the alien monster, or overcomes the evil genius. I find it interesting that we are so drawn to such stories.

Paul turns the attention of his first century readers and us to the hope engendered by Jesus himself. Jesus of Nazareth, crucified for our sins and raised for our justification,  has averted the destruction which we deserved by our sins. Placing himself in that path, he has born its wrath. Yes, the world is going to end. But I am not worried about that.

Wednesday of Pentecost 21 – Psalm 96:1-13

Psalm 96:1-13

Oh sing to the Lord a new song;
    sing to the Lord, all the earth!
² Sing to the Lord, bless his name;
    tell of his salvation from day to day.
³ Declare his glory among the nations,
    his marvelous works among all the peoples!
⁴ For great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised;
    he is to be feared above all gods.
⁵ For all the gods of the peoples are worthless idols,
    but the Lord made the heavens.
⁶ Splendor and majesty are before him;
    strength and beauty are in his sanctuary.

⁷ Ascribe to the Lord, O families of the peoples,
    ascribe to the Lord glory and strength!
⁸ Ascribe to the Lord the glory due his name;
    bring an offering, and come into his courts!
⁹ Worship the Lord in the splendor of holiness;
    tremble before him, all the earth!

¹⁰ Say among the nations, “The Lord reigns!
    Yes, the world is established; it shall never be moved;
    he will judge the peoples with equity.”

¹¹ Let the heavens be glad, and let the earth rejoice;
    let the sea roar, and all that fills it;
¹² let the field exult, and everything in it!
Then shall all the trees of the forest sing for joy
¹³ before the Lord, for he comes,
    for he comes to judge the earth.
He will judge the world in righteousness,
    and the peoples in his faithfulness.

In the early 5^th century BC, shortly after the Jewish exiles were allowed to go home, the Persian Empire was expanding to the west, into Greece. A small contingent of Greek soldiers stood in their way at a narrow point between the sea and a mountain. The spot was called Thermopylae. The Spartan king, Leonidas, was told that the Persians were so numerous that when they shot their arrows the sun was darkened. Leonidas’ reply was, “Good, we will fight in the shade!”

The psalmist today seems to have a similar attitude about impending doom. God comes to judge the world in equity and he is organizing a grand celebration. Shouldn’t he be running around in circles, pulling his hair out at the thought of such a judgment. He acknowledges the Lord’s power in verses 4-6 and in the next verses tells the whole world to tremble before Him. But he is planning a party!?

Leonidas of Sparta could see something larger than himself when he fearlessly faced the entire Persian army with a tiny force of his own. He knew that he would die, but he was buying time for the Greeks in the cities behind to get organized. Eventually they won great battles at Salamis and Platea, the Persian threat was turned back. The Persian Emperor, Xerxes, sometimes called Ahasuerus, fled back to Susa, his capital. There he consoled himself after his defeat with a new bride, a young Jewish woman named Esther.

The psalmist likewise knows something which makes his joy reasonable of a sort. He knows that the One who comes to judge is also the One who comes to save, filled with grace, mercy, and love. God does judge this world with equity and perfect justice, but His wrath falls upon His Son, Jesus and we are spared. So let the whole world rejoice. The Word who was with God, who is God, by whom all things were made, has been born in Bethlehem’s stable and died on Golgotha’s cross. Raised in glory, we rejoice to see our judge has wounds in His hands and feet where he paid our sin’s price.

Tuesday of Pentecost 21 – Isaiah 45:1-7

Isaiah 45:1-7

¹ Thus says the Lord to his anointed, to Cyrus,
    whose right hand I have grasped,
to subdue nations before him
    and to loose the belts of kings,
to open doors before him
    that gates may not be closed:
² “I will go before you
    and level the exalted places,
I will break in pieces the doors of bronze
    and cut through the bars of iron,
³ I will give you the treasures of darkness
    and the hoards in secret places,
that you may know that it is I, the Lord,
    the God of Israel, who calls you by your name.
⁴ For the sake of my servant Jacob,
    and Israel my chosen,
I call you by your name,
    I name you, though you do not know me.
⁵ I am the Lord, and there is no other,
    besides me there is no God;
    I equip you, though you do not know me,
⁶ that people may know, from the rising of the sun
    and from the west, that there is none besides me;
    I am the Lord, and there is no other.
⁷ I form light and create darkness,
    I make well-being and create calamity,
    I am the Lord, who does all these things.

George F. Kennan guided U. S. foreign policy in relation to the Soviet Union in the middle of the 20^th century. In his retirement this famous intellectual and diplomat became an avid opponent of nuclear weapons. He truly thought they were evil and should all be abolished. Politically, Kennan was a passionate Democrat which led to a great irony. Retired from the State Department, he could finally express his political views, and he was very clear on this: He had little respect for Ronald Reagan. But it was his enemy, Reagan, who did more to further Kennan’s goal of nuclear arms reduction, than any other president. At one point, in Reykjavik, Iceland, Reagan proposed to the Soviet premier, Gorbachev, that they just get rid of all the nuclear weapons.

Isaiah today has us look to Cyrus the Great, the first emperor of the Medo-Persian empire which replaced the Babylonian empire in latter part of the sixth century BC. Make no mistakes about Cyrus. Cyrus was a wicked man who ruled brutally. But he was also a practical ruler. He saw political gain in making a gesture to the oppressed people of his day and reversed the Babylonian exile policy. This policy had forced people, including the Jewish people, to live far from their homelands. In effect, he ended the Babylonian Exile which had so traumatized the people of Judah 70 years earlier.

Isaiah says that God used Cyrus to do this, and that God had caused Cyrus’ meteoric rise to power. God did so to bring His people home. I am no prophet and cannot discern what God is up in this time and place. But I can see that God uses sometimes strange means to accomplish His kingdom’s goals. I may not know exactly what He is up to right now, but I know Him and I trust the promise that He made through Paul – All things work for the good of those who love God (Rom. 8:28). I will trust Him and pray for those who rule over me. They too are instruments in God’s hands.

Monday of Pentecost 21 – Prayer of the Week

Prayer of the Week

O God, the protector of all who trust in You, have mercy on us that with You as our ruler and guide we may so pass through things temporal that we lose not the things eternal; through Jesus Christ, Your Son, our Lord, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.

A college athletic director sat the football coach down for an after-the-season talk. It was not going to be pleasant. The team had not won a single game. When confronted with this difficult reality, the coach responded, “But when we got to the end of the season, we still had all our time-outs!”

The coach clearly had his priorities in the wrong places. His goal was not to preserve the time-outs which were allotted to each team. After all, they are worthless once the game is over. His goal was to win games and develop the young men in his charge into being better athletes and better people. He should have used the time outs for to those ends.

The prayer asks God for mercy and God’s gracious rule and guidance so we may pass through things temporal without losing the eternal things. We are praying to have our priorities straight and to know what is really important. On a day of judgement, when the heavens are rolled up like a scroll and God ushers in a new heaven and a new earth, the things which the world considers important today will be like time-outs five minutes after a game is over. Unused, they have no value.

So, what are the eternal things? Paul tells us in I Corinthians 13 that even faith, hope and, knowledge will pass away. The one eternal he can see there is love. It does not pass away. Jesus tells us that even a gift of a cup of cold water given to a little one in His name will have cosmic significance. Go do something eternal today. Love a sinner, forgive, feed the hungry, and be a bit of that Light which has come into the world.

Friday of Pentecost 19 – Matthew 21:33-46

Matthew 21:33-46

³³ “Hear another parable. There was a master of a house who planted a vineyard and put a fence around it and dug a winepress in it and built a tower and leased it to tenants, and went into another country. ³⁴ When the season for fruit drew near, he sent his servants to the tenants to get his fruit. ³⁵ And the tenants took his servants and beat one, killed another, and stoned another. ³⁶ Again he sent other servants, more than the first. And they did the same to them. ³⁷ Finally he sent his son to them, saying, ‘They will respect my son.’ ³⁸ But when the tenants saw the son, they said to themselves, ‘This is the heir. Come, let us kill him and have his inheritance.’ ³⁹ And they took him and threw him out of the vineyard and killed him. ⁴⁰ When therefore the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants?” ⁴¹ They said to him, “He will put those wretches to a miserable death and let out the vineyard to other tenants who will give him the fruits in their seasons.”

⁴² Jesus said to them, “Have you never read in the Scriptures:

“‘The stone that the builders rejected
    has become the cornerstone;
this was the Lord’s doing,
    and it is marvelous in our eyes’?

⁴³ Therefore I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people producing its fruits. ⁴⁴ And the one who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces; and when it falls on anyone, it will crush him.”

⁴⁵ When the chief priests and the Pharisees heard his parables, they perceived that he was speaking about them. ⁴⁶ And although they were seeking to arrest him, they feared the crowds, because they held him to be a prophet.

“Hear another parable.” Jesus is getting desperate, but not because these men to whom he is speaking are about to kill him. He knows how this will play out. It is Holy Week when he speaks these words, those tense days leading up to his crucifixion and resurrection. No, Jesus is desperate for their sake. “Hear another parable.” Why another? He is going to die anyway. They will conspire and plot, suborn his disciple, and finally push his case through a hastily convened kangaroo court. The governor will cave to their demands and Jesus will die the tortuous death of the accursed, crucified by Roman soldiers. He is not trying to change that with this parable. He has come to save this whole world through that death. Peter tried to dissuade Jesus from this earlier in the book and Jesus called that Satan’s way of thinking.  Why another parable?

I see Jesus’ gaze moving from man to man, and they were all men, in that crowd of Pharisees, Sadducees, Priests, and scribes. He stops on each face. Were some of them wavering? Nicodemus had wavered and secretly followed him. Joseph of Arimathea was one of the elites in town. He would ask for Jesus body along with Nicodemus after Jesus’ death. There were those in that crowd who might be called out of their hatred and into something else. That is why Jesus tells another parable.

The religious leaders did not miss the point of the parable. They were the wretched tenants and the owner of the vineyard would surely put them to a wretched end. Does Jesus pause a little longer on the face of the old man in the second row of his enemies. Does he see a glimmer of doubt there? Is that we he is looking for. Does he tell this parable for that man, so he can escape the crushing judgment which follows their terrible deed?

I have imagined all this. I do not know that this scene played out in just this way. But Jesus loved the men who murdered him with a judicial system. He spoke one more parable because he loved them and would that they not participate in this betrayal of justice. Hear another parable and repent. It is not too late. God’s love is deep and wide and enough for you too. Hear another parable.

Thursday of Pentecost 19 – Philippians 3:4b-14

Philippians 3:4b-14

If anyone else thinks he has reason for confidence in the flesh, I have more: ⁵ circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; ⁶ as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless. ⁷ But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. ⁸ Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ ⁹ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith— ¹⁰ that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, ¹¹ that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead.

¹² Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. ¹³ Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, ¹⁴ I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.

Did your grandmother ever make button spinner for you? It is one of those old-time toys that grandmothers like to make. String several feet of thread twice through a heavy button, tie it off to make a circle of thread, loop it through your fingers so the button is suspended between your hands. Flip the button so the thread has about ten twists and start pulling your hands apart and then relaxing on the string. The button will start spinning. You can get it moving pretty quickly with a little practice. The trick is to relax the tension and reapply it at the right moment. If you do not know what I am talking about, do an internet search for “button spinner” and you can watch one in action.

Paul sounds a little like that button in this passage. In his previous life, before his encounter with Jesus on a road to Damascus, the tension had been great. It almost broke him. He had become sort of a monster, persecuting people. Christ relaxed that tension and he rebounded the other way, spinning furiously for the Gospel. Here we see him admitting that he has not made it yet, but he says, “I press on to make it my own.” But then, he remembers, and the pressure comes off “because Christ has me his own.”

My picture breaks down a little here. Paul does not now spin back the other way into his old legalism, but the tension and relaxation of God’s Law and Gospel have put a great deal of energy into Paul’s life. In II Corinthians 11:22 he does another similar catalogue of his life, but this time goes past his conversion. He never really did slow down. I get exhausted just reading about it.

God is adding quite a bit of tension into the lives of people these days. I wonder what He is up to with all this. Some days I was weary of this world even before pandemic and tensions which permeate our world now. There have been whole days in which I do not want to check my newsfeeds or listen to the radio. If you need it, you have my permission to sit on the patio or in a favorite chair with the cat or a book for a while today and do nothing. But more importantly Paul reminds us of the great relaxation which God has given us. Paul forgets that which lies behind him. Christ’s forgiveness and love has covered all of it. That frees Paul to look ahead and strive for what God has promised, an upward calling in Christ.