“Come, all you who are thirsty,
    come to the waters;
and you who have no money,
    come, buy and eat!
Come, buy wine and milk
    without money and without cost.
Why spend money on what is not bread,
    and your labor on what does not satisfy?
Listen, listen to me, and eat what is good,
    and you will delight in the richest of fare.
Give ear and come to me;
    listen, that you may live.
I will make an everlasting covenant with you,
    my faithful love promised to David.
See, I have made him a witness to the peoples,
    a ruler and commander of the peoples.
Surely you will summon nations you know not,
    and nations you do not know will come running to you,
because of the Lord your God,
    the Holy One of Israel,
    for he has endowed you with splendor.”
Seek the Lord while he may be found;
    call on him while he is near.
Let the wicked forsake their ways
    and the unrighteous their thoughts.
Let them turn to the Lord, and he will have mercy on them,
    and to our God, for he will freely pardon.

• Isaiah 55:1-7

The Lord makes firm the steps
    of the one who delights in him;
though he may stumble, he will not fall,
    for the Lord upholds him with his hand.
I was young and now I am old,
    yet I have never seen the righteous forsaken
    or their children begging bread.
They are always generous and lend freely;
    their children will be a blessing.

• Psalm 37:23-26

“Have you ever thought what it [would] be like if (all other things remaining as they are) old age and death had been made optional? All other things remaining: i.e., it [would] still be true that our real destiny was elsewhere, that we have no abiding city here and no true happiness, but the unhitching from this life was left to be accomplished by our own will as an act of obedience & faith. I suppose the percentage of diers [would] be about the same as the percentage of Trappists is now.
“I am therefore (with some help from the weather and rheumatism!) trying to profit by this new realisation of my mortality. To begin to die, to loosen a few of the tentacles which the octopus-world has fastened on one. But of course it is continuings, not beginnings, that are the point. A good night’s sleep, a sunny morning, a success with my next book-any of these will, I know, alter the whole thing. Which alteration, by the bye, being in reality a relapse from partial waking into the old stupor, [would] nevertheless be regarded by most people as a returning to health from a ‘morbid’ mood!.
“Well, it’s certainly not that. But it is a very partial waking. One ought not to need the gloomy moments of life for beginning detachment, nor be re-entangled by the bright ones. One ought to be able to enjoy the bright ones to the full and at that very moment have the perfect readiness to leave them, confident that what calls one away is better. …”

• C.S. Lewis, Preparing for Easter (from Letters of C.S. Lewis)

Boilerplate

First, the concept of Lent is the preparation for what is to come, the anniversary of Christ’s death and resurrection between Good Friday and Easter Sunday.  But in some denominations, the entire time from Advent, the anticipation of Christ’s coming (remembrance of His birth but preparation for His return) to Easter (Christ’s resurrection from the dead)…  This bracket of time is a celebration of the entire life of Jesus Christ on earth.  Christ’s conception to His ascension and on to the Holy Spirit coming upon the Apostles at Pentecost can be presented and celebrated from early December until Pentecost Sunday.

Many denominations only focus on Christmas and Easter, or maybe the entirety of Holy Week from Palm Sunday to Easter, and then may or may not focus on Pentecost.

But for those that recognize Lent, the Lenten season in many denominations has an element of fasting.  Sadly, this is done as Jesus teaches us not to do.  They make a big deal out of it when we should do it in private, something just between us and God.  But that tradition stems from the forty days of fasting that Jesus did in the wilderness after His baptism and before His ministry started.  The Lenten season is kicked off on Ash Wednesday.  And after forty days, we reach Palm Sunday, the beginning of Holy Week.  The concept of ashes is symbolized by at least one denomination having a cross painted on their forehead in ashes, sometimes from burning the palm fronds from the previous Palm Sunday the year before.  Again, that draws attention to the fact that they have started their fast.  But they are also announcing that they are Christians.  There is good and bad there.

So, when we are in the Lenten season, what should we focus on?  It depends.  We should focus on Jesus, but we might want to focus on our service to God.  What can we do better?  How can we spread the Gospel?  From Conception to Pentecost…  His mission was completed on earth, but He left us with something to do.

As for the Lewis book, it comes from a compilation of Lewis’ writings, edited by Zachry Kincaid.  In the book, there is a devotion, of sorts, from Ash Wednesday through Easter Sunday, the Lenten Season.  Each devotion contains suggested Scriptures and a writing of C.S. Lewis.

I am going to use my free time posts, Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday afternoons (EDST) to correspond with that day’s devotion in the book.

Discussion

This devotion is a bit of a letter to a surgeon at Johns Hopkins, Warfield M. Firor of Baltimore, Maryland, USA (15 October 1949).  The date is interesting.  Lewis is talking about getting old and feeling the pains of that, but he was at the time about six weeks shy of his 51^st birthday.  He would have another fourteen years of such pains.  Just as Jesus said about His return not being something that He knew, we rarely know when our final breath will be.  We must make the time from now until then something for God’s glory.

Since this quote was a letter to a friend or a fan of his books (who often became friends that he may or may not have ever met), he shortened the word “would” to “wd.”  Since some readers might be confused, I substituted those words.

If I had an old spreadsheet from my former employer, I could tell you what I did at work during the year that I turned fifty-one.  I remember vividly what I did two years later, at least parts of that year.  When I was 51, I was working hard and my wife may have had a part-time job at that time.  Two years later, I started my wondering about life, death, and what prospects I might have had.  It was when I was 52 and a half, that I started shaking like I had the palsy.  My resting pulse was near 200 beats per minute.  And I started losing weight – rapidly.  Each of these symptoms might be something totally different on their own, but our personal care physician at the time was a doctor from Taiwan.  He was very wise and very kind.  He sent me to an endocrinologist who pointed to Graves Disease almost immediately.  But between the first visit and the results of the tests that confirmed his diagnosis, I had to go to India for a two-week training program, right after the monsoons had hit.  Everything was green and lush, and I was on a few medications that had to be taken precisely twenty-four hours apart.  I was taking morning medicines before going to bed and night medicines during the morning tea due to the time difference.  I went through the vicious cycle of remission and relapse for three years before I swallowed a radioactive iodine capsule which killed my thyroid, stopping the cycle, but requiring me to take synthetic thyroxin to have any metabolism at all.  And the doctor never said that I would never have a day for the rest of my life where I felt just a little energy.  But that does not stop me.

Now my weight is stable, hard to lose a pound or two, but my heart is not trying to pound out of my chest, 24/7.  But since then, I could echo what C.S. Lewis wrote.

But what something like that does to you is that if you had not realized it before, you suddenly become aware that your days are numbered.  And if you love the Lord, you want those days to count.

But about that time, I was an elder in the church on the ruling body.  We went through a building expansion.  We went through the financial crisis of having twice the building to maintain, but less income due to various reasons for exodus of the true believers – death, children graduating and moving where they went, crazy idiotic decision of the general assembly of the denomination that were plain stupid (Did I just write that out loud?)…

My gift was in teaching and writing.  It was not telling church leaders who exhibited absolute zero faith – for them to have faith in God’s plan.  It is now twenty plus years since then and the mortgage for the expansion is paid off.  The leaders seem to be living by faith, but are the times as dire as they were twenty years ago?  We react differently in stressful times and our lack of faith often shows only then.  That is why they call those times tests of faith.  But for most of those twenty years, the pastor was a loving, caring child of God who changed the hearts of many.

But as C.S. Lewis ends this letter, he says that these aches and pains are an awakening of sorts.  Each day is a gift from God to glorify Him and spread the Gospel.  But each ache and pain points to a time and place where there is no more pain, no more sin, and no more death.

Our days are numbered and we must make them count for our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

Soli Deo Gloria.  Only to God be the Glory.