Sunday Feb 17 Lenten Post. Under Foot

The lesson which life repeats and constantly enforces is look under foot. You are always nearer the divine and true sources of your power than you think. The lure of the distant and difficult is deceptive. The great opportunity is where you are. Do not despise your own place and hour. Every place is under the stars, every place is the center of the world."
- John Burroughs

Let me bend that quote to another direction as well. As I looked at the Sunday gospel lesson from John 3, I considered those familiar words of being “born again or “born from above”, as well as John 3:16, a verse that I memorized at a vacation bible school before I was 10 years old. Has it become old hat? Am I tempted to discard it and look to more distant sources of wisdom? Or do I need to look "under foot" and the nearness of this source?

I was recently part of some conversation that invited me to think of when I am “passionate about my faith” or what it means to have “an evangelistic heart.” As I prepare to to preach about these well worn words in John 3;16, I rediscovered how passionate I am in them.
For God so loved the world! And to tell the story of Jesus as that divine gift and truth....to invite people into this believing relationship...that is abundant, unending, and transcends death. It is a new beginning, in a new generative source! Born again..and from beyond myself, and from within...the wind /breath of the Holy Spirit. We have the opportunity right where we are in the ground of our gospel.