Looking at the brackets of team match-ups at the beginning of the tournament it all seems so orderly and neat. Sports fans everywhere make their predictions of who will beat who and who will emerge as the ultimate victor. But when the games begin and little Cinderella schools occasionally defeat a big power school it truly becomes madness and chaos. Almost no one guesses all of the games outcomes correctly. Even the college basketball experts on TV end up frustrated and disappointed like the rest of us. So much for predicting the future.

This week millions and millions of people lined up to guess the lottery numbers that could win them millions and millions of dollars. All but maybe a few will end up disappointed as well. No one can know which numbers will come up. All we can do is make a guess and take our 176,000,000 to 1 shot like everybody else.

At the beginning of March here at PRC we were just beginning the journey through the time of Lent. Sometime I am tempted to call Lent “March Sadness” since we use this time to examine our sins and shortcomings before God. That may not be the  most cheerful task but it leads us to a much better place.

A very important part of the Christian life is the recognition that we can not predict or control the future. Thinking that we can is one of the things we need to repent of because it keeps us from putting our lives and fates in the hands of God, who is in control.

When this March began who could have known that Cal and Pat Warren and Doreen Apgar would lose their sister and their mother in the span of a week. Such sad and tragic circumstances prove that almost anything can happen. It seems like madness when such things happen. So many people become disappointed and discouraged to the point of losing faith in God; wondering how a God who is in control can allow so many bad things to take place. That is why it is important that we journey  through Lent and the events of Holy Week. It gives us a narrative of how the goodness and love of God interacts with the brokenness of his world. The events of Jesus’ final days before the cross were, in their own way, madness. But they were allowed to happen and endured by God’s own Son because it was the only way we could receive from God his desire for us, wholeness. Wholeness is a state of being that is achieved when we become who and what we were created to be and meant to be.  The Hebrew word “Shalom” does mean peace, but it means more than that, it means complete peace, or wholeness, something which we can never have without a right relationship with God. It is what Evelyn and Charlene are now experiencing. It happens when our lives are in God’s hands.

This is what we celebrate at Easter! Through Christ we are ultimate victors because Christ endured the world’s madness to bring us true Shalom.

 

Pastor Ed