A bucket full of rocks

This past week I gave a Children’s sermon about prayer, I don’t know if the children understood it but I had plenty of adults who appreciated my metaphor. I used a bucket of rocks and explained how the rocks represented our burdens. Our burdens weigh us down and are often hard to carry on our own. Each rock represents a concern. We have concerns about our grandfather who is sick, or a sibling who is having a hard time. We struggle with work or school, or paying the bills. We miss our parents or friends who have died and we mourn their loss. We've made some mistakes and we feel bad, we feel guilty and ashamed. We worry about our world, all the injustices, a lost plane, and the people who do not have enough food to eat. All of these burdens weigh us down like a bucket full of rocks. Yet if we have a friend to help us carry the bucket it is not as heavy. And if we share our burdens with others and allow the people around us to cart a few of the rocks with us our load isn't so heavy. If we lift up our concerns to God, then the bucket is much more manageable. That is how I believe it is within the life of the Church and with a relationship with God. Life can certainly weigh us down with a big bucket of rocks, yet as we journey together and with God the load becomes easier to bear.

 So I encourage you to lighten your load and keep sharing and keep praying!

As we begin the season of Lent we contemplate the wilderness of our lives. “My soul thirsts for you, for God,” (Ps. 63). In the midst of the wilderness we desire to know God. The Bible talks about the wilderness as a place of testing, or trial, or emptiness, or absence. It is often in the wilderness that we discover what is essential. Perhaps we are in the wilderness because we have experienced a serious illness, or a medical uncertainty, perhaps we are depressed or experienced a form of prejudice. You may be walking down the road of darkness and grief and know all about the wilderness. Most people relate it to being in a dry and weary place desperately longing for a cold drink of water. Lent is a time of being in the wilderness and discovering the temptations that plague us. It reminds us that life is difficult and the Christian life is difficult. So we gather in the presence of God and ask, “Create in me a clean heart, and put a new and right Spirit in me.” We draw close to God, pleading, weeping, and longing to be forgiven and to be strengthened. Lent is a time to have a heart to heart with God. So keep talking, keep questioning, keep wondering... it is that season.