Deeper Still
A Lenten Message from Bishop Dan Gifford.
Beloved in Christ,
On Ash Wednesday, we were invited in the liturgy to observe a holy Lent:
by self-examination and repentance
by prayer, fasting, and almsgiving
and by reading and meditating on God’s holy Word.
Being able to accept this invitation is a wonderful gift of the Gospel because:
Through the cross of Jesus, we know God’s forgiveness, mercy, and restoration, allowing us to examine ourselves and bring our sin to Him.
Through our baptism into Jesus, we can call God our Father and pray to Him with the intimacy of being His beloved daughters and sons.
Through the incarnation of Jesus, the Word made Flesh, we know the Bible as God’s living word in which He speaks to us and transforms us by His Holy Spirit.
Our Lenten invitation reminds us to constantly unwrap these gifts of grace from Jesus.
Empty Hands
How do we open our lives to His grace? Jesus teaches us that it is only by coming to Him with empty spiritual hands. In the Beatitudes that begin His Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says: "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven" (Matthew 5:3). Jesus starts with this blessing because no one can enter the kingdom of heaven without being poor in spirit. We can only be filled by God’s grace when we come to Him with spiritually empty hands.
To be "spiritually rich" with full hands is to be like the Pharisee from Jesus’ parable—confident in one’s own righteousness. This is a massive temptation in our own culture. We often feel self-sufficient and respectable to God simply because we are respectable to each other.
To be poor in spirit, however, is to cry out with the tax collector: “God, have mercy on me, a sinner.” That is the humble cry. It acknowledges your utter need for God to fill you with His forgiveness and grace—enabling you to receive all you need to bless the world around you.
Our world desperately needs the blessing of God through His people. We have been mourning as a nation for the children and adults killed and injured in Tumbler Ridge, BC. In this despicable act, we as a nation are faced with the darkest of evil. We ask why this could happen, and we cannot imagine the deep pain of the families and friends of those who were killed. It is brought home to us as a nation that we, by nature, have empty spiritual hands.
No Pit So Deep
The great and precious blessing we can share with the world is that Jesus alone can fill those hands. God Himself invades even the worst darkness of this world with the Light of Jesus, and the darkness cannot overcome Him (John 1:5).
Corrie ten Boom, one of the great evangelists and teachers of the 20th century, had a profound understanding of this gift of Jesus through the terrible suffering and evil she and her sister, Betsie, experienced in WWII. As Betsie lay dying in the Ravensbrück concentration camp, she turned to her sister and said, “We must tell them that there is no pit so deep that Jesus is not deeper still. They will listen to us, Corrie, because we have been here.”
Trust Renewed
In Lent, we renew our trust in Jesus—who is deeper still—by coming to Him as those who are poor in spirit. We are under God’s grace as we mourn our own sin and the evil in this world (Matthew 5:4), because we always grieve with the certain and powerful hope of Jesus.
As we engage the invitations of this holy season, may we know the blessing of God filling our empty spiritual hands:
By self-examination and repentance, we face our own sins and the sins of this world with a humble trust in His abundant mercy.
By prayer, fasting, and almsgiving, we comfort others in even their deepest pain with the grace with which God comforts us (2 Corinthians 1:3-4).
By reading and meditating on God’s holy Word, we find the certain and powerful Hope of Jesus, the Light that the darkness cannot overcome.
By our prayers, our love, and our words, may we bless the world by sharing that our Lord Jesus, who is deeper still, fills empty hands.
Yours faithfully,
+Dan
The Right Reverend Dan Gifford
Diocesan Bishop