It’s easy to forget what you’re doing. Easy to walk into a room and then stare off into space perplexedly, wondering why you came in there and why you’re holding a hammer. This is a classic danger when heroes go questing: inevitably they will walk over some enchanted ground, or they will fall under some witch’s spell, or they will dally with a fair maiden with the result being that they forget what they’re doing and some helpful squire or mentor has to come along and remind them who they are and what they’re supposed to be doing.
All throughout scripture the Lord instructs his people to remember, remember, remember. Remember the gifts of God, remember the past faithfulness of God, remember the work he has given you to do. Paul tells Timothy to stir up, or rekindle, the gift of God. So consider what God has given you, and what God has given you to do, and how God has provided for you in the past. Remember that God is remaking the world and that he is doing so by means of word and sacrament each Lord’s Day, and psalms around the dinner table, and hard and honest work throughout the week, and laundry washed and folded, and joyful marriages, businesses built, and children loved and fed and taught to fear God. The Kingdom of Christ is built in these things, and it goes forth invincibly.
One of the ways we forget the gifts and calling of God is when we stop believing that the Kingdom of Jesus shall be victorious in this world, that the will of God will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven.
But if we’re honest, the truth that the church will be victorious in the world is frightening. It means that we really are engaged in a great war and that what we do matters. It means that the sword in my hand is for stabbing and the shield is for blocking real arrows, and not just for looking cool until the play is over. But our God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of love and of power and of a sound mind. Love for God and neighbor, the power of the Holy Spirit at work in us remaking the world, and the wisdom of Christ which looks like foolishness to the world.
So let us pray to our God for Christian courage and repent of our faithless cowardice.
Joshua Edgren – April 7, 2024
