Cold Weather Monday Retreat

Good Morning.  It is another chilly day here in Brandon.  These are the kind of days that one opens up the windows in the house to get out the old winter woolie smell and bring in the new smell.    And we do have a smell here in our house.   We had water leaking through to our kitchen fan yesterday.  I'm hoping the smell is the smell of watery insulating batting... but smells more like a dead something in the walls.     Humm.  How drole.  But by opening up the windows,  the crispness of winter is brought inside and makes everything smell new. 

As we come into the season of Lent,  this is what we begin to do... we open up our lives and  do something neat and revitalizing!   Like fresh air coming into a house,  we need to let the Word of God refresh our hearts and minds and souls.   

Devotional...

Prayer:  Thank You Lord that we are Your hands and Your eyes to bring Your love and Good News into our community.  This day,  help us share Your love and Good News with every person we meet.  This we ask in Jesus’ name.  Amen.

Read:  St. Matthew  6: 1-4

The message in these four verses is immediate and important.

No showboating allowed.   Be against ostentation.  The world is not a stage.   Jesus instructed the disciples (and us today) to do good deeds but after doing a good deed, don’t look around and see who watched you do your good deed.   Don’t help someone out because you think it makes you look good.  Jesus says,  help out your family and your neighbour and your enemy quietly and unobtrusively. A couple of years ago,  there was a movement called “Pay it Forward”.  When you ordered your meal (or coffee) from the Tim Horton’s  Drive Thru window you would place your order and then say, “And I’ll also pay for  the person’s order who is in the car ahead of me.”  Pay it Forward.    

 This is the way God works.  God works quietly and unobtrusively behind the scenes in love.   Today,  Pay it forward to someone today!  This is what it means to be a Christian.

Prayer:  O God,  let me sing a new song to You.  Let me play this new song of love with great joy.  You are the God who saved us from sin.  You are the God who saved me.   In Jesus’ name we pray.  Amen.

Many blessings!