September 26, 2021
Hope Lutheran Church
Rev. Mary Erickson
Stewardship Series: Abundant Joy Overflowing Generosity
Mark 1:35-39
Prayer: The Channel to Abundant Life
Friends, may grace and peace be yours in abundance in the knowledge of God and Christ Jesus our Lord.
Every day, rivers carry tons of silt downstream. You don’t notice it happening. But over time, the deposits build up. A once navigable river becomes shallower. Sandbars emerge and make the passage more complicated for boats.
Eventually, something must be done. The buildup of silt needs to be removed.
When the Yellow River in China is cleared, it’s an extremely dramatic event. They blast an incredible 30 million tons of silt downriver. And they do this ANNUALLY.
All of those tiny, nearly invisible particles of sand and grit certainly have a way of building up. Each piece by itself doesn’t amount to much. But put them all together, and you have a real force to contend with.
Something very similar happens in our faith life. We have this beautiful connection with God. We’re cognizant of how God’s steadfast love is with us always. We recognize how God’s blessings continually flow and fill our world and our lives. That connection is like a wide river. The channel of beauty and joy flows in and through us.
But then there’s grit. There’s worry, there’s resentment, there’s chaos and want and fear. Down come anxiety and shame. Here comes envy and bitterness and just simple exhaustion. There’s tragedy and disease and disappointment.
Any one of these hazards might be navigable. But put them all together and they choke us off from God. Their cumulative effect slowly builds up until the broad, flowing channel of grace and beauty and joy in the Lord has clogged up and reduced to a trickle.
Now, instead of being surrounded by the abundance of the river’s current, we live in the meager shallows. We cling protectively to what little we have. We jealously portion out our time and our energies. And we no longer live in abundance. We live in want.
We need spiritual dredging. And we need it on a regular basis. This isn’t annual spring cleaning stuff. We are bombarded by such an onslaught of clutter and negativity. What we need is daily cleansing.
That cleansing power is prayer. Prayer keeps our broad channel with God flowing free and unencumbered. We stay connected and aware of this unending river of grace and divine peace.
In our gospel passage today, Jesus had snuck away in the wee hours of the morning. The sun hadn’t yet arisen. He went to a remote, deserted place, and then he prayed. Jesus removed himself from the forces of diversion. He intentionally travelled to a place where the competing barrage of demands and voices couldn’t reach him.
When morning came, Peter and the other disciples discovered Jesus was gone. They started to look for him. Mark says they “hunt” for him.
Even when we make the effort to remove ourselves from diversions, those demands come hunting after us! As we sit in prayer, in the quiet, along come those worries. They seek us out. We’re in this peaceful prayer connection with God and BAM! Suddenly I’m thinking about everything I have to accomplish today. That big long laundry list of to-do’s has hunted me down and demands attention.
Jesus knew the importance of connecting with God on a daily basis. Prayer does that. Prayer is our direct connection to God. Jesus knew he needed to keep that divine connection vibrant if he was to be faithful to his mission. Time and again we witness him intentionally stepping away to ground in prayer.
• When he was just a youth, Jesus’ parents panicked when they couldn’t find him on a journey. They traced their steps back to Jerusalem and found him in the temple. Jesus told them, “Don’t you know that I have to be in my Father’s house?”
• Before he began his ministry, Jesus retreated to the wilderness. He spent 40 days in fasting and prayer.
• And then before his arrest, Jesus went to the Garden of Gethsemane where he prayed fervently.
• Even from the cross, in his dying breaths, he prayed.
Prayer opens up the broad channel of God’s grace. It sweeps away anxieties and shrinks our grievances and obsessions. Instead of being slowly choked off from the source of life and goodness, the river of divine joy overflows all around, in and among us.
Martin Luther knew the importance of prayer, too. He wrote, “If I fail to spend two hours in prayer each morning, the devil gets the victory through the day. I have so much business, I cannot go without spending three hours daily in prayer.”
That’s a lot of prayer time! Charles Spurgeon was a prolific Christian writer in the 19th century. As he pondered Luther’s statement, he wrote, “If we have to stop and pray, it is no more hindrance than when the rider has to stop at the farrier's to have his horse’s shoe fastened; for if he went on without attending to that it may be that ere long he would come to a stop of a far more serious kind.”
When my alarm goes off in the morning and I open my eyes to a new day, I’ve found that the best way to begin my day is in prayer. Before I get out of bed and the obligations of the day sweep me along, I like to dedicate my day to the direction of God’s current of grace:
Thank you, God, for this new day. Thank you for this marvelous planet that you’ve given us for our home. Thank you for the blessings you send me, far more than I could ever count. Direct me this day, that my footsteps and actions are in alignment with your good and gracious will. I know you’re with me through thick and thin. May I be your servant today.
Rooted in prayer, we live in God’s abundant joy and overflowing generosity.
Note: For week two of the series, we will have a guest preacher, so I won't be contributing that sermon here. The theme is "Giving God our Worship" and the biblical texts are 2 Sam. 6:1-5, 17-19 and Luke 19:29-40.
