The first Sunday of Lent in Pauses for Lent by Trevor Hudson focuses on Mark 1:12-15:
At once the Spirit sent him out into the wilderness, and he was in the wilderness forty days, being tempted by Satan. He was with the wild animals, and angels attended him. After John was put in prison, Jesus went into Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God. “The time has come,” he said. “The kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news!”
Angels attended him is translated as the angels ministering to Jesus according to BlueLetterBible.com, which offers an original translation of scripture. Isn’t that something? The greatest minister of all was ministered to by a messenger from God. To infer from A to B to C here, if Jesus is perfection and was ministered to—tended to—then we ought not be afraid or ashamed of letting ourselves be ministered to.
I think sometimes we get shamed into thinking that stress, frustration, anger, and sadness are sinful, and that because they’re sinful we need to deal with them on our own. I’m certainly guilty of that. I’m an internal processor, so I’ll think about a thing for days, weeks, months, years… and then all of a sudden feel better because I thought about it for all that time. I worked it out in my head, by myself, where my natural instincts tell me it should be worked out.
I wonder if that burden would be relieved a lot sooner if I let someone in on my thoughts and feelings and then they could minister to me, tend to me. Would that be so bad?
You Enneagram 5s and 9s are like, YES, YES IT WOULD BE SO BAD. I get it! But listen, I’m not sure these emotions in and of themselves are sinful. Jesus felt all of those things. The difference (to me) was this: he didn’t stew in them. He talked to God about them. He stuck with his community and, apparently, let himself be ministered to by angels.
When was the last time you let yourself be ministered to? The last time you let someone walk beside you during a difficult season—and not just when you were at your wit’s end? Like, you said, “yes, that’d be great, thank you,” when God sent someone in your path to teach you something, to help you with something, to ease a burden on your heart? Our angels might look a whole lot different than they did in Jesus’ day, but they still absolutely exist.
Let the angels minister to you this week. Let them bring the kingdom of God right to your doorstep (or let them leave it on your doorstep if you’re more comfortable with that social distance). Let the angels that God purposefully sets in your path bring the kingdom of God right to your heart so that we may do our best to live out heaven on earth for as long as we are so here.
Lent—the Easter season—brings to mind the kingdom of God, a kingdom that Trevor Hudson reminds us is intimate, shared, transformational, powerful, loving, and—above all—eternal. May we let each other minister to one another so that the kingdom God set forth for his sons and daughters would be felt each and every day in all its glory.
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