February 18 Lent Day 1
Matthew 5:1-2
“Now when Jesus saw the crowds, he went up on a mountainside and sat down. His disciples came to him, and he began to teach them.”
REFLECTION
Relax. There is no performance pressure, no fear of failure or underachievement. Jesus called his disciples to leave the crowd behind and gather at his feet. To humbly accept this authority. To learn. To follow. To be a true disciple – seeking to learn God’s will and emulate the life of God’s Son – we must start by submitting to Jesus as Lord.
God is holy and we are called to be holy as well. To be holy is to be set apart, consecrated for a special purpose, apart from the world. We begin this Lenten journey by following Jesus away from the noise and distractions of our day-to-day life to a place where we can hear Jesus’ voice and that alone. We acknowledge his teaching as divine and authoritative. We will not be trying to find a way to add them to our lives but seeking to submit our lives to his divine teaching.
Some will hear the words of life in scripture and know them well…but those words will never change their lives. Do we hear the words of the Sermon on the Mount and move on, like pedestrians who briefly watch a street performer, perhaps toss some coins in a hat, and then carry on with our lives? Or do we follow Jesus to the top of the mountain and sit, quietly, devotedly, attentively at the feet of the Master? Is the kingdom of God just a part of our life…or is our life devoted to seeking it first, before all things?
PRAYER: Lord, make us humble. Give us the courage to depart from the crowd and follow you. Give us ears to hear your truth. Help us to not only accept, but to believe. And then shape us in new life, for your glory and your purposes. Lord, we want to sit at your feet and learn. Then we want to bear fruit which your grace provides, that the whole world can see, and which glorifies God alone. AMEN
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