LENTEN READINGS AND REFLECTIONS

DAY 3

Reading: Matthew 13:36 - 19:30

There are so many things that seem impossible.

When assessing circumstances, relationships, careers, finances, the future, we tend to think we know how things will end.

I cannot count the times in my life when I've been certain that a relationship would end badly or that my career would come crashing down or that someone I know would never change.

There are times when I look at our family expenses and compare that with our family income and despair or when I look at the myriad tasks set out for me to accomplish in a given week and compare them against my time and energy and throw up my hands.

Impossible.

We are often like the disciples sitting in the boat in Matthew 16:7, fretting and arguing about who left the bread ashore, wondering where we might possibly find more, forgetting all the while that the very same Jesus who's fed 5000 and then 4000 mouths with bread multiplied by the sheer power of his Word sits in the boat with us.

With Jesus, there is no such thing as “impossible.”

The rich young man (19:16-30) did not know that. He had great wealth and loved it far more than he loved God. He probably had his affairs quite in order, his investments wisely placed, his future, in this world, secure.

Jesus called him to let all of that go, give it away, and become his follower.

Doing so would require trust; trust that Jesus would provide; trust that Jesus would make ends meet; trust that the treasure Jesus promised was far better than the treasure he would give away.

The young man couldn't do it. He had all the numbers figured out. He couldn't let them go.

He would not take the bread that Jesus offered. He preferred the false security of keeping his own accounts.

This is why peace is often so hard for Christians to grasp.

We do not trust the One in the boat with us. We think we will run out of bread. We do not believe that Jesus can change circumstances, change lives, heal bodies and souls. And so we do not trust and we do not rest.

But the divine promise so forcefully given to us in today's reading is that nothing is impossible with God.

You can give him your today and tomorrow, your future, your career, your marriage, your life and rest assured that these things are in far better hands than your own.

Ask God today to help you trust him. Think of the most trying circumstance or shortage or broken relationship in your life and give it away to the Lord

Just try it.

The promise of Christ is that in his hands the impossible is possible.

But you will only know and experience this if, unlike the rich young man, you let go and trust Jesus to care for your treasured impossibilities.

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