Ember Wednesday in Lent 2019

One of the hardest things for us to remember is that we are in God’s gracious care and keeping.  We confess in the First Article of the Creed that God graciously gives us clothing and shoes, food and drink, house and home, wife and children, land, animals, and all I have.  When we pray the Fourth Petition, “Give us this day our daily bread,” it is a confession that God gives us absolutely everything that we need, and He does it even if we fail to ask for it or thank Him for it.  But the anxiety still creeps in.  Is God really looking out for me?  It didn’t feel like He was with me through that trial.  If God is really with me, would He let me stare this problem that just keeps getting worse?  When Satan tempts us with unbelief, when he asks us “Does God really care,” it’s easy for us to fall into one of the two faithless responses we have seen in tonight’s Readings.  But as Paul reassures Timothy: “If we are faithless, [God] remains faithful” (2 Tim 2.13).

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