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Dear Friends,
As children most of us were taught to pray at bedtime:
Now I lay me down to sleep / I pray the Lord my soul to keep
If I should die before I wake / I pray the Lord my soul to take.
But what if I should die before I live?
What a great pity it is that so many of God’s beloved children have little chance to live! One of those vexing and perplexing mysteries of life is why the majority of children in our world are born into such deprivation, such poverty, such hopelessness, such danger. We hear the stories at all hours of the day, from every conceivable source, of the hopelessness of God’s people.
One of my favorite books of all time is The Gospel According to Peanuts, by Robert Short, published in 1965 during the most exciting time of my college and seminary days. Short calls the church the largest lost and found department in the world. The fifteenth chapter of Dr. Luke’s gospel is sometimes called the "lost and found chapter," containing stories of the lost sheep, a lost coin, and the lost brother. In the last verse, the father says, "this brother of yours was dead and has come to life; he was lost and has been found."
Charles Wesley, great Methodist hymn writer, expressed the dead-alive/lost-found heart of the gospel in this way:
Soar we now where Christ has led / Following our exalted Head.
Made like him, like him we rise / Ours the Cross, the Grave, the Skies.
As of this writing, our church and virtually every church in the Western world is preparing to celebrate a series of events we collectively call Holy Week: Palm Sunday, Holy Thursday, Good Friday, the Easter vigil … all culminating in the Resurrection.
If we participate in the drama of these events through our worship, our weeping, our great joy … we will remember that we are called to be disciples of Jesus Christ. As followers of Jesus, we are called to live sacrificially … to bring nourishment to the starving, freedom to the enslaved, healing to the sick, protection to the innocent, hope to those who have given up, peace to those caught in the brutality of man against man. We are called to go out and find the lost and to bring the dead back to life.
Let’s not let them die before they have the chance to live. He is risen! He who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life can transform the lost and dead souls among us. And we are God’s hands and feet and heart to make it happen. Awesome!
The last words humans addressed to God that are recorded in the Bible: "Even so come, Lord Jesus!" (Revelation 22:20)
Grace and Peace,
Pastor Ron
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Howland United Methodist Church
730 Howland Wilson Rd NE
Warren, OH 44484
Phone: 330-856-3463
Fax: 330-856-7037
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