Lent Day One: WIGIAT?

Today is Ash Wednesday, and I'm going to try to take on the Lenten discipline of updating this blog everyday during Lent. I feel called to do this, because there's a lot of ideas that pop into my head, and I never get them down, and maybe, because God has called me to be in such a public role in regards to faith, perhaps I'm also being called to be a little more public in sharing these things.

For some direction, I'm going to be answering WIGIAT? Where Is God In All This? So, here goes 40 days worth of telling you where God has shown up in my life.

Recently, God was revealed to me by a member of the congregation, Christ the King Lutheran Church, that I serve in. This person took me aside and said they'd followed my sermon advic  Jesus' command, from the previous week, and "Prayed for their enemy".  This enemy wasn't someone the person knew, but was someone that had been a real jerk on the road the day before. The person shared with me that her perception changed from angry feelings about putting this person in their place, to concern and care for whatever it was in his life, that caused him to be such an angry and aggressive person.

Now, what I didn't discuss in my sermon, was Jesus' command in the same passage to "be perfect, just as your Father in heaven is perfect." Perfection in this case, is much more a state of seeing as God sees, rather than trying to be perfect human beings. Through her prayer, the member of my congregation was indeed given the eyes of God in how she viewed her enemy. In other words, she had been given the perfect vision of love (in her own way) that God has for all of us humans. AND she shared that vision with me, she shared God with me, and now, I'm sharing God with you.

And so, that is where God is. God is in our prayers for our enemies, and God has been made known in the sharing of this prayer.

Pray for your enemies, and see if God makes you perfect too!