After my first two heart by-pass surgeries, I spent 24/7 in a recliner covered with what I called, a 7,000 lb. quilt. I could hardly push it off me and since I didn’t have strength to lower the foot rest I crawled in and out of the recliner.  It was not a good look.  St. Paul writes in, Romans 5:6-11.  “For while we were still weak…Christ died for the ungodly.”

St. Paul is talking the weakness of being a sinner.  I probably said some ungodly words while struggling with the 7,000 lb. quilt.  Yet, St. Paul writes, “God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”  “God shows” (present tense) his love for me while I was still failing to give thanks 24/7 for the wonders that God had done for me through the medical field.  My baptized self still needed to kill off the old Ron every day so that a new Ron might wake up in that recliner in the morning. That’s been the daily cycle of my life, since my baptism now nearly 77 years ago.  As Paul wrote elsewhere, “When I am weak, then I am strong.”

St. Paul adds that, while we were enemies, God befriended us in Christ.  Having made us his friends again, we can rejoice through what Jesus did for us at the end of Holy Week and at the beginning of the new week.