Enter
Published in the Omaha World Herald’s “From the Pulpit”
November 20, 2022
Reverend Eric L. Jay
“Enter”
“When it rains, it pours.” “Bad things come in threes.” “Misery loves company.” “And just when you thought it couldn’t get any worse…”
It never seems to be just one thing that goes wrong at a time, does it? It’s rarely just that one easy setting on your computer that fixes it. It’s rarely just that one cheap part they have in stock that is needed to fix your car. It’s never just one representative you have to be transferred to in order to have your account problems resolved.
It has been one of those kind of weeks for me. Nothing truly catastrophic or serious went wrong. Everything that has gone wrong has been or is able to be fixed, but at moments it felt like death from a thousand papercuts. In one of my moments of frustration, I opened one of Martin Luther’s devotional books that I have that goes through the Psalms. The text that was assigned for that day was Psalm 100, “Make a joyful noise to the Lord…serve the Lord with gladness.” In all honesty, my first thought was, “tough to do right now Lord!” Then I kept reading. “Know that the Lord, he is God! It is he who made us, and we are his.” My next thought was, “Sorry, Lord.”
I don’t think I am alone in confessing how easily and too quickly a lot of small problems seem to stifle the joy God offers to us even when everything is falling apart. One thing, the most important thing, will never fail or fall apart or breakdown or ever be compromised; God’s reign in and over our lives as the children He has made us to be eternally by His grace through faith in His One and perfect Son, Jesus Christ.
Working through the rest of my day today, I tried to keep Psalm 100 at the forefront of my mind. Truth be told, there were a lot of things still not going well and every time one fire was put out another ember seemed to start a fire somewhere else, but verse 4 of Psalm 100 kept going through my head, “Enter his gates with thanksgiving, and his courts with praise!” About the third or fourth time, the gravity of that very first word of verse four hit me, and my frustration with all that was going on subsided. “Enter.” That’s not just God’s invitation to you and to me, it is His command to me, to us, as the people He has made us to be; His people. “Enter into His gates” because they have been opened to us in and through Jesus our Lord.
When we allow faith in the Word of God to rule over our hearts and minds, even the most frustrating of times can be cause for giving thanks to God, for it is He who has made us, it is He who has saved us, and we are His eternally.