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Surrender is a beautiful thing. When we pursue it, God extends his protection over us, he extends his love, he extends his dominion, his lordship over us, and those we care about.

It's important to embrace our past and the present - they are both gifts from God.  But we need to account for the ways God will continue to gift us in the future.  Each season of life brings with its own blessings. If we live faithfully, our lives follow a pattern where the main focus goes from learning, to earning, to returning. 

Faith is both a gift and a virtue. We can’t give ourselves this gift of faith. It’s been given to us by God himself. God desires that we all come to knowledge of him and come to salvation, but it is also a virtue which means it’s something that has to be cultivated. It has to be exercised.

True happiness, joy and peace are not dependent on the circumstances of our lives. When we choose to let go of the anxieties we feel, and place our hope and trust in the Lord, he will guard our hearts, and direct our thoughts and our passions away from those external things we have been reliant on, and bring the contentment and hopefulness that are the hallmarks of the Christian life.

We can’t always control our situation or circumstances completely, but we can always make the decision to be like Jesus. Jesus submitted himself to the cross. He submitted himself to the Roman government. He submitted himself to torture. He submitted himself to all of these things yet he remained free of bitterness. He remained free of resentment, all the way to the point where he could freely say from the cross, “Father forgive them for they do not know what they are doing.” He didn’t change his circumstances but he had agency which he demonstrated by not allowing his suffering to callous his heart.

God does command a blessing when we come together in unity. He rewards our collective efforts to 1) build each other up, to 2) value every person, and 3) to keep what’s important, Christ’s mission at the center.

Our readings remind us that we must not undervalue God’s love for us and what Jesus did for us, thinking that his death and resurrection alone is a ticket to heaven. We tend to neglect our need to humble ourselves under the need for daily redemption. How loudly do our actions preach the truth about Jesus and demonstrate that we’ve been bought back?

Today’s Gospel compels us to think of two of God’s greatest gifts to us, his love and our free will. The two go hand in hand. We hear, “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son”, and then we’re encouraged to use our freedom to choose the light as a response to God’s love.

Even in the worst of times in our relationships, we all long to be understood and accepted, to be made whole, and that we matter. And one of the ways that God sends healing to us is through the aid of that one person here on earth who knows us the best. It is God that ultimately does the healing, but a good marriage is one of his very best tools.!

None of us have had the experience of hearing God’s voice aloud as Samuel did or had Jesus look us square in the eye and say, “What are you looking for?” But when we need answers, the roadmap that includes both listening and speaking is a good place to start.  

If we begin to see the Holy Spirit as the voice of God that has been gifted to us to live inside all of us, in order to produce God’s character in us, and if we embrace our two tasks: 1) Recognize that the Holy Spirit is, in fact, inside us, and 2) Don’t quench the Spirit – don’t let worldly conformities impede him from showing through… (If we do those things), I think we will have made a large down payment toward living out our ultimate calling, to make disciples of others.

Has there ever been a time in our lifetimes when so many of our brothers and sisters need our outreach, who need to be cared for, who need to be validated, who need to be encouraged, who need to hear that they matter, who need to feel connected, who need to hear that God will sustain them through this time of isolation, who need to know that we serve a gracious and loving God who forgives our sins, and who can heal them in their suffering? How blessed we are that we can be God’s soldiers, his ambassadors and his disciples who can serve on his behalf to stand in the gap, and make a difference in people’s lives.

Made clear from Jesus' message ("Repay to Cesar what belongs to Cesar and to God what belongs to God") is that every Christian holds a dual citizenship, and both citizenships have their own benefits and duties. Our birth made us citizens of an earthly nation while our baptism made us citizens of a heavenly kingdom.  Sometimes those citizenships overlap, but in the end, our earthly citizenship will finish, while our heavenly one will last for eternity. It is obvious which one is more important!

God’s ways are so far beyond our ways. We’re promised that the last will eventually become the first and the first will eventually become the last. Our faith must show through in these four things: Trust and belief and acceptance and surrender to God’s will. In what I think may be the most illustrative line in this Gospel, the landowner asks the laborer, “Am I not free to do as I wish with my own money?” We must honor God’s sovereignty.

Jesus teaches us some lessons today about handling fear.  There’s probably not one of us here today that, in the midst of the turbulence that we have faced this year, who can boast that they have stood above it all and have not had some sense of fear and trepidation. Maybe we’ve had the illness affect us or a loved one directly. Maybe it got a little scary for us watching news reports of outbreaks including the recent one at Manor Care. Maybe it wasn’t so much the disease itself, but it was the ancillary effects such as a job loss or the stock market taking a sudden nose dive. Like the disciples, we too may have been, or continue to be, terrified.  How is it that we can best handle our fears? 

Have you ever known someone who, no matter how old they were, seemed more like a child than an adult? It’s like they chose to never grow up – sort of like the Tom Hanks character in the movie “Big”, from 1988 (32 years ago). Today’s readings remind us that God wishes for us to be more like children, to have a childlike faith. Having a childlike faith enables us to grow in wisdom.

In order to be transformed as we are called to this Lenten season, Jesus is asking us to be people of action. Stay connected to him by making time to be with him in prayer. Deliberately show our gratitude even in the midst of the storms. Stop playing the comparison game, on social media or wherever we feel inclined to unnecessarily seek the approval of others. And lastly, be cheerful givers. Be generous with our words of praise, and give of our time, our talent and our treasure.

The good news of Lent: God sees each of us. He knows us. He is committed to us. He passionately loves us. No amount of work on our part can increase his love for us. And despite the fact that we may not be able to see his face, hear his voice, or feel his touch, we can trust him.

1) God’s will for our lives is that each of us will bear abundant fruit. 2) God helps us to bear abundant fruit by allowing us, through our interactions with others, to be pruned. Sometimes that pruning is painful. 3) When the hurtful actions of others causes painful pruning, we can take our suffering to the foot of the cross, and through God’s gifts of love and forgiveness, the experience will actually enrich our lives.

If we only dabble in our faith lives, we will only have enough religion to make ourselves miserable. But if we dwell in it, dwell in Him, then we will gain more and more of His presence. If we invest time with Jesus in a lifestyle of worship, and work at our spiritual fitness, we begin to not just know more about Him- we begin, more importantly, to have a deeper relationship... with him. Catholic writer, Matthew Kelly, puts it this way: “Our lives change when our habits change.”