By Pastor Don Schatz

Living Real

You can listen to today’s devotion by clicking on this SoundCloud link.

“As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world.”
John 15:19b English Standard Version

My grandson loves to wear his dad’s Virtual Reality goggles.  He likes to play in what he calls ‘the other world’.  I love how kids create their own terms for things.  During Lent, his other world imagery hits me in a couple of ways.

In many ways, we live in two worlds at once as followers of Jesus.  We are in this world, but not of it.  We also dwell in the world of his Kingdom, which has both visible and invisible qualities to it.  Both intersect with the world as we know it through us, because we are in the world.

In Lent, we purposefully journey for a time into another world for a season.  It is not a Virtual Reality world.  It is very real indeed.  It is the world of walking with Christ the Way of His Cross.  The way to His Cross.  The way to His grave.  We discover again, each Lent, that even in this other world, it is the world of For Us.  Why did Christ live, suffer and die?  Because of us, that is our sin.  For sure.  But more:  He did it For Us.  Now, yes, he rose also but that’s the Easter world.  During Lent, we do not rush headlong toward that day.  We walk purposefully.  We consider the truth of our sin humbly.  We sincerely focus on our repentance.  We grow in wonder at God’s Love for us.  We watch Christ in his walk in our world, as we revisit it through the record of the Gospel accounts.  Finally, through Good Friday and Holy Saturday, we kneel, at least in spirit, before the forgiving purpose of the Father and his Christ:  For Us.

Christ has chosen us out of the world.  We are his own.   In this real world.  In this time of Lent.  Into eternity, in the glorious world of his unveiled presence.

Copyright Holy Cross Lutheran Church, Colorado Springs, Colorado