Rev. David Horton

Center yourself on today’s reflection by lighting a candle and reciting this breath prayer:
Inhale – May I sense you every moment
Exhale – and make my whole life a prayer.

Matthew 6:1-4
1‘Beware of practicing your piety before others in order to be seen by them; for then you have no reward from your Father in heaven.

2 ‘So whenever you give alms, do not sound a trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, so that they may be praised by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. 3But when you give alms, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, 4so that your alms may be done in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.

Reflection:
One of our students passed away in December. He was 17 years old. For the first time in my ministry, I was burying someone I had also baptized. He was on his way to college, but then his life was taken from him.

But he had a church family, people who knew his story and loved him from boyhood to manhood, and they raised enough money to offset the funeral expenses. Their names are known to God. They didn’t want to be named or thanked. I imagine they’d be offended if anybody ever knew it was them. They gave simply out of love.

We’re already a few weeks into Lent. Where has the time gone? Lent is nothing more or less than Spring training. The rest of the calendar is the regular season. We go to play on Team Jesus and give it our all. Lent is the pre-season, like Spring training in baseball. It’s when we go back to the basics of prayer, fasting, self-denial, and generosity. We practice these things like drills on the field so that we’ll play better the rest of the year.

Maybe the hardest skill to master is humility. Humility, to echo CS Lewis, isn’t thinking less of yourself. It’s thinking of yourself less. A humble person has the right desire behind their discipline. There are the disciplines of prayer and fasting and giving, but what are your desires for practicing them? What’s the why? Is it to gain the approval of others? Is it because it’s the “right thing to do?” Is it to earn a ticket to heaven? Or is it simply to love God more? Here’s where the humble person knows what the proud doesn’t: if we practice these disciplines without the right desires, then we are no better, to echo Paul, than a “noisy gong” or “clanging cymbal” (1 Corinthians 13:1). The right discipline without the right desire means you’ll make noise, but it won’t be music.

So make the most of this Lent. Go back to a regular prayer life. Give generously to God’s causes in the world. Fast from those habits and ways of thinking that have no place in the person God dreams you’d become. Make the most of this one fragile, finite life. But do it for the right reasons. Do it for love of God and neighbor. There’s too much noise in the world. Let’s make music.

Prayer:
Lord Jesus, I’m your follower. So help me get to the following part. Help me to do these things you ask me to do. But above all, give me a clean heart so that I’m living for the right reasons. Put a new and right spirit within me. Amen.