Pastoral Letter
Dear Friends,
This year March is the month of Lent. Ash Wednesday is on the 1st of March, therefore the whole month is within the 40 days of Lent. Actually, Lent is a period of 46 days from Ash Wednesday to Easter Saturday, but we don't count the six Sundays, so that brings the figure down to 40 days.
Those 40 days mirror the 40 days that Jesus spent in the wilderness preparing for his ministry on earth. During that period Jesus was tempted by the devil to consider alternative ways of achieving his objective - of sharing God's love with the world.
He was tempted to win people's hearts by meeting their material needs through turning stones into bread; or to become a superman figure by jumping off the highest pinnacle of the temple and being safely carried to the ground by angels; or to become the greatest king that ever lived. All those temptations were put to him as supposed short cuts to his objective. Yet Jesus never wavered or weakened, he resolutely stayed true to his destiny to become the servant king, the one who would suffer and die for us all in order to help us be right with God. He rejected the easy soft options in favour of the hardest option of all - the one that demanded the greatest pain and suffering.
All of us are tempted to take short cuts in life. We are tempted to satisfy our inner needs at the expense of others, to give in to our weaknesses, to do something we know is wrong in the hope of getting away with it. But in the end we are being selfish and self-centred. But the message of Lent is that Jesus Christ understands our temptations and wants to help us to cope with them, in the same way that he coped with them.
That thought reminds me of the occasion when Joseph Turner invited Charles Kingsley to his studio to see a picture of a storm at sea. In rapt admiration, Kingsley exclaimed, "It's wonderful! It's so realistic! How did you do it?" The artist replied, "I went to the coast of Holland and engaged a fisherman to take me out to sea in the next storm. Entering his boat as a storm was brewing, I asked him to bind me to the mast. Then he steered his boat into the teeth of the storm.
"The storm raged with such fury that at times I longed to be in the bottom of the boat where the waves would blow over me. I could not, however. I was bound to the mast. Not only did I see the storm in its raging fury, I felt it! It blew into me, as it were, until I became a part of it. After this terrible ordeal, I returned to my studio and painted the picture."
Jesus Christ has been there and experienced temptation at first hand for himself, and he knows exactly what it is like. So, the next time you are tempted to do something you know in your heart is wrong, why not consider sharing it with Jesus in prayer? I am sure he will understand - he's been there, he understands.
May God bless you all,