Pastor's Midweek Message

Midweek Message w/o March 9,  2025

Sisters and brothers,

Lent is a period of reflection. It’s a 40-day cycle of repentance and searching ourselves to see

how we are doing, and to bring ourselves into closer alignment with God. It’s not a part of our

year just to make us give up chocolate, or deny us things; it’s there as an invitation to check

ourselves and to ensure we haven’t wandered off the path God has in mind for us. It’s a time for

us to deepen our discipleship and to redouble our efforts to remain connected with God.

In my experience, most of the time God works through invitation. We are invited to follow God;

we are invited into the grace that saves us and then we are invited to be changed by the grace that

sanctifies us, as we learned a couple of weeks ago. Could God direct us, command us to follow

God? Sure. But then God wouldn’t be God, because pure love has no strings attached. God can’t

command us to love God: that would be manipulative, and that’s not God.

At the same time, though, in my experience God’s invitation is rarely given through bold and

loud events, but rather found in the quiet whisper of our souls. That, after all, is where Elijah

found God, in 1 Kings 19: not in the fire or the storm, but in the quietude. That means we have to

quiet ourselves, we have to shut off our inner monologues, we have to be intentional about

building space for us to listen to God.

What is it God is inviting you into, this Lent?

For some of us, it might mean taking up a new spiritual discipline, as we talked about in January.

For others, it might mean finally heeding that repeated nudge to get involved in a new way—to

engage with a ministry we’re offering, or to speak up and say, “I think we have an opportunity

for something new in our community” that God may be laying on your heart.

For all of us, it will involve listening for how God might be inviting BHUMC into a new season.

This weekend we will hear a little more about the Simplified Accountable System (SAS) of

church governance, and we’ll hand out little prayer cards for everyone. These will invite us all to

share in prayer at the same time each day—2:55pm—with the words of Psalm 25:5, “Lead me in

your truth and teach me, for you are the God of my salvation; for you I wait all day long.” In that

way, when the voices of dozens of hearts are lifted at the same time, God has a clear channel to

whisper to us how God wants us to move.

I am excited by what God is doing with us. I was thrilled to welcome four new members,

including one baptism; I was thrilled that there were 80 people worshiping God on Girl Scout

Sunday and how wonderfully the Girl Scouts did. I am thrilled that new people are checking us

out all the time. These are all signs of how God is working in our community!

But our work isn’t done, and Lent is a perfect time for us to reexamine ourselves, reexamine our

church, and ask how it is we can listen to God’s invitation to join Jesus in the work he is already

doing in our neighborhoods.

So let’s go.

Grace and Peace,

Pastor Eric