Finding Eden In A Noisy World

What if the point of Lent isn’t gritting our teeth but finding our center again? We open a new season by stepping into the Exodus story, watching a mother push a basket into dangerous water and trusting a future she can’t see. That basket shares a word with Noah’s ark, a quiet signal that what’s inside is sacred. The connection is more than literary—it reframes us, too, as precious cargo worth protecting, guiding, and growing.

From there we get honest about the ache Blaise Pascal called the God-shaped hole. We reach for meaning, often by grabbing what promises quick relief: pleasure that numbs, money that insulates, power that controls, even the sharp energy of resentment. The smaller substitutes show up in habits we joke about—sugar, screens, coffee—yet they still train our hearts. Lent invites a kinder audit: not shame, but clarity. What’s ruling my attention? What’s scripting my day? What might I let go of so love can lead?

We also rethink Eden. Following Richard Rohr, we stop treating it as a lost location and start receiving it as a way of seeing—unitive consciousness, a felt nearness to God we regularly forget. Scripture is one long rescue: Adam to Noah, Abraham to the prophets, all the way to Jesus, God keeps calling us from exile to home. The path is rarely straight. Two steps back and three forward still counts as grace. That’s why our Lenten focus is practical. Choose what you can control. Trade one ruling habit for one grounding practice: silence before screens, a walk before worry, generosity before grasping. Seek justice where you stand and let respect for every person be the public face of your faith.

By the end, we circle back to the river and the courage it takes to release control. Surrender here isn’t defeat; it’s alignment. You are precious cargo, and your days are worth this care. If this journey helps you breathe deeper and love steadier, follow the show, share it with a friend, and leave a review so others can find their way back to center too.

Transcript

Lent Begins And Intentionality

Pastor Darren 0:00

Well, very good. Good to be with you this morning. We uh start a uh a new season. Some of us were able to join us at uh join together on Ash Wednesday and start on the official beginning of Lent. Others are maybe starting just today, uh, but it is a season that uh I appreciate a season uh of self-denial with the hopes of getting closer to God. So uh maybe potentially you've let something go and uh uh you're looking to uh uh readdress where your focus is, where your priorities are, and uh the hope would be that you might even find something to add to your life to help you uh uh be more spiritually focused and uh again a little closer to God. For me, I really appreciate the intentionality of it. I really appreciate the idea of taking 40 days, and we're gonna try and get good at this. We'll do that with other things in our lives, but how often do we do it with our spirituality? Well, maybe it should be once a year, right about now. So the Exodus story. Uh, it is um uh the beginning in many ways of of the Exodus story, our passage for today. Some of you might remember from the ending of Genesis. We ended with Joseph and his fancy coat, right? The technicolor dream coat, uh, and they ended up in G in Egypt. The whole family ended up there. Well, over time they become eventually uh economically oppressed and then even enslaved. So, Exodus, it starts with Moses, this baby, getting put in a basket and sent down the river. The idea was Pharaoh was nervous about all these enslaved people, these folks who would work for a living, getting stronger and stronger, getting more vital, more vibrant. And so he started wanting to tamp them down by killing all of the males. Another one of the great children's stories in our scriptures. So the positive thing is as the baby starts floating down the river, he gets found by of all people Pharaoh's daughter, who takes kindly on this child, even though she's pretty sure it's an Israelite child, a Hebrew child. Um, his sister, Moses' sister, has followed. And so she is able to say, Oh shoot, you're gonna need somebody to take care of that baby. I know somebody, and then brings the mother over. So the mother gets to at least nurse this child up to an appropriate age. Uh and what it leaves us with this this person, Moses, in a really unique position. He is a Hebrew child, but he's gonna grow up in the Egyptian uh, well, under the umbrella of the Egyptian rule, there, being the baby that Pharaoh's daughter has claimed. And so we'll see some of that uh in his life get play out between those two things. Um it's also not just the beginning of Exodus, but it's also the beginning of our series theme, which is talking about the journey to faith. This, in many ways, as it's the beginning of the Exodus tale, it's also the beginning of a faith journey, right? Or at least it's a metaphorical one. We start from this place of being influenced, right? In many ways, especially as we're young, life can be seen kind of like we're floating in this basket down a river, and there's these influences around us that kind of move us this way, push us that way. We're being pushed, we're being tempted, different pressures, different influences. The thing is, we as human beings, and I've preached this before, we we really kind of desire context and meaning for our lives. We want to know that our life matters in some way. That is an inner feeling that we have. The Apostle Paul talked about it in Scripture. Uh, one of our early theologians, St. Augustine, also talks something about something similar. Uh, but I'm learning Blaise Pascal often gets credit for the phrase that I like the most about it. He called it the God-shaped hole. Again, I think I've preached on that before. Uh, in other words, we have a spiritual hole inside of us that wants to be filled, that we want filled. Meaning we we want to have some idea of why we're doing something. We want to have some idea of why it matters. So we will move toward things we find kind of meaningful, something important. The thing is, not everything we fill that hole with is holy. Nobody? No, not everything we fill that hole with is holy. Okay, I got you think this job's easy. I crafted that, I had it going. You know, I take credit for groans as much as I do laughs, by the way, just so you know, as we go further in this relationship. No, not everything meaningful to us is a good thing. Yeah, we'll we'll we'll fill it by maintaining good vibes, good behaviors, we'll do the right thing, we'll be fair, we'll be just, but we'll also look to other things to find meaning. There's some obvious ones that we've seen in life, maybe in our own lives or around our lives, like alcohol, like drugs. Life is about enjoying myself. So uh yeah, let's do this. And we know that it often becomes a bit of an escape from life instead of this enrichment. Many of us have seen what this allegiance will do to a life. Other common temptations in our society, money, power, right? If I have money, I'll have comfort and security for me and for mine. Right? Or power. If I have power, I will have influence in my life. I will be able to make sure my life has meaning. Sometimes sometimes those uh other gods can be more personal, like a hatred for someone else or for another people. We can let hate run our life as well. In any case, the thinking is, the metaphor is, the image is that we float down this river of life looking for this larger purpose or meaning, but there are a lot of less meaningful things we'll be drawn to or that will push us by or push us as we move down this river. I think that's why Lent can be such a meaningful season for us. It gives us a chance to think about the river that we're floating down. We can think more intentionally about the influences that are around us. Maybe more specifically, we can look with a more discerning eye on the journey that we are taking. I mention some bigger temptations that are available to us. We should mention that there's smaller temptations too. Sometimes it's food. Sweets. Now, a problematic commitment here maybe isn't as bad as other things, and yet we probably ought to admit to ourselves we have an overeating, unhealthy problem in our society. I should mention in this season that Girl Scout cookies fall outside of this purview. I did put in a special prayer with the big guy. I asked for release of this confidential info. I was informed that Girl Scout cookies are delightfully healthy. And then God told me that we're to keep our thin mints in the freezer. They are better in the freezer. Hey, from on high. Anyone want coffee coffee? Mmm, coffee. I didn't drink coffee till I was in my 40s. Can you imagine? It's like I got I I was free of it, right? I got past the difficult, you know, got through college, all the tough, and then 40, right? And then I got tempted. I was at a uh conference, and uh, you know, conferences, and uh somebody showed up and said, I got one extra caramel macchiato. And I'm like, Well, that's that's barely coffee, that's like suck it down dessert right there. And then I drank this caramel macchiato, and I took the best notes I've ever taken in my life, and I said, This coffee, there's something good about this, and ever since then I'm kind of a regular, right? A little bit. Coffee people? Okay, okay, all right, all right. You ever get disappointed you've already had your cup? Hey, you oh well, maybe some of you are all like just one. Maybe you're disappointed you already had your fifth, right? And nobody can do six. I don't know. Maybe it's something like that. You ever get disappointed you find yourself looking forward to that first cup of coffee the night before, before you've even gone to bed? All right. I have to admit, I've been there. You ever get that little headache when you haven't had the coffee? You know, your your body gets acclimated to coffee, right? This is why you get your body gets physically dependent on coffee to the point where it's calling for it. Maybe you don't need it, but you're uncomfortable without it. I wonder if this is a little bit of what we're talking about with these other gods that we're supposed to be careful about, these other gods we're supposed to move away from during Lent. But it's a tough one this time, right? When you talk about Lent, oh, I'm gonna give up murder. I will not murder anybody this whole season, right? Yeah. Okay. Low bar. And then we say coffee, and you're like, oh shoot. And yet here is something that has influence on your life, so much so your body is calling for it. I I think that's potentially uh why this Lent season can be intimidating, right? Even a little bit, uh a little bit scary. So I've got some encouraging words from Exodus, right? Uh Exodus passage, it gets kind of interesting here. We hear the story and we envision a basket, right? It's a basket that Moses is put in as he's floating down the river. Interesting point, and Stephen would make it if I didn't make it. The word that is actually used is the same word that's used for the ark that Noah built and then they hid in for the 40 days and nights of rain. Let's think about that for a minute, right? Here's the ark designed to preserve not just Noah's family, but the family of faith that will follow along, the body of believers that come behind him. The precious, precious cargo. That's what went inside the ark. Then they use the same word when they talk about the basket that Moses is in. Moses is critical to the faith. Just like Noah's family is critical, Moses becomes the leader that brings the Israelites to fruition, right? He's the one that gets them out of enslavement and into the land that God wants them. He is in that basket precious cargo. Yet again. So if we extend the image, right, if we extend the metaphor, and I believe we're supposed to extend this metaphor, which we're supposed to understand it this way, we've got precious cargo ourselves. We are precious cargo. At least that's what God would say. We are precious cargo and we should treat ourselves as such. The hope is that we might find inspiration from this Exodus tale that teaches us that God has these feelings for us. God understands us as precious cargo, understands us as holding precious cargo. I'm going to point out one more exegetical Bible-y thing. The theme that we are going to be talking about as we walk through Exodus here in the Lenten season, or one of these themes is a theme that's actually some would argue present all the way through Scripture. With the whole book, the whole Bible. He said, Well, I'm going to try this with Adam and Eve. Right? And then that didn't work out as good as he had hoped. So he said, We'll start working with Noah, and we'll try it this way with this family, and that didn't work out as he had hoped. Then he starts working with Abraham and this story of patriarchs of people and carrying out the faith. If we go further into scripture, he starts working with prophets, he starts working with kings, judges, even before that. Finally, he ends up sending Jesus different ways of trying to help us understand how we might get ourselves back to Eden. God even tries working with Jesus in allowing Jesus to be killed, resurrection. All of these ways that God has worked with us through Scripture to try to get us back to that place of Eden, of right relationship with God. That's a cycle that'll play out through Exodus, and it's a cycle that plays out through Scripture. But here is my confession. Are you ready? Full confession. I've never been too keen on getting back to Eden. Have you read that story? Oh, running around naked? No problems, no cares. I mean, sure, maybe some of you want to run around naked, but I don't know. I'm not really into it at this point, as he makes this joke. I'm just not a hundred percent sure this is God's ultimate vision for our lives here in this world. I'm not sure that's what God intended. I wonder if some of the work we want to be doing is in how we understand Eden, this place of right relationship, this place that we are seeking. I wonder if that should be our special focus on Lent. Richard Rohr, who is uh the driver of the devotion that I've invited you all to join me on for this year, and I get invitations in the Sunday emails. Richard Rohr, he doesn't see Eden as another place. He sees it as a mental space, a spiritual space. Right? And he writes this first quote. I think we have it up here. Eden is a symbol of unitive consciousness. All right, big words. Some of us are reeling it in, some of us are all come on, Pastor. Eden is a symbol of, it's a mindset, it's a spiritual mindset. We cannot objectively be separate from God. We all walk in the garden, whether we know it or not. We come from God and we will return to God. Everything in between is a school of conscious loving. He's trying to tell us Eden isn't this place we're trying to get to either here or beyond here. He's trying to tell us it is a mindset, a spiritual mindset of being in right relationship with God. And we have that capacity to do that, to move towards the spiritual center, that place of right relationship with God. We have that capacity, but so many of our life journeys lead away from that center, that Eden, that right place. So many of our stories in Scripture mark that temptation away from the center. How many times have we read stories about a fall and recovery, hiddenness and discovery, loss, and then renewal, failure, and then forgiveness, exile, and then return. It's because that is the state, that is the cycle of our life journey of faith with God. It's moving as much as we can towards that middle, but then having the influences around us pull us off of that center. But Richard Rohr, he's got some words of encouragement for that journey as well. He writes, I think that's up there too. Fortunately, we are always being led back to the real center to find who we really are, to find ourselves in God. God seems both very patient and very productive with the journeys back and forth. Such is the pattern of the soul, of history, and of the Bible, the progress of sorts, two steps backward and three forward. God comes to us with grace and with patience, with all the grace and patience we need to walk this journey, this journey of seeking that centeredness, but then being pulled out of it. And that's why, to me, this work that we are committing to or you're invited to here at Lent is so important. It's important for us to start working through some of these big questions about how we understand Eden. What are we striving for? What is that center for us? Maybe it's a where question, where is it spiritually, but certainly it's a what question. What is it that we, what is it that you are seeking? You seek God in God's presence. Is it some kind of meaning? Is it some kind of purpose? Is it some sort of calling? What's the part of this Eden that you can find? To me, this is a much more focused way of looking at our job over land. We need to reflect on these important questions. And I'll give you one pro tip. Are you ready for the pro tip for today? It's probably not something you have no control over. Not something you have no control over. Lent is about us. It's about our capacity to live the life that's in front of us with love for God, for others, and for ourselves. It's not going to be about controlling what we can't control. It's about being committed to justice and fairness, respect for all God's children. It's about being able to find that peace for ourselves and with ourselves to be in right relationship with God. For many of us, that journey of Lent will start today. I pray that it is a space with God. So in that mindset, in this spiritual place, I want to take you back to the story. The story of Moses being sent down this river. And I'm going to take you back to the feelings of that mom in particular, of acknowledging that she's sending her son off to. Blessed beyond ways that we can understand.