Attend to your inner strength with God.

I love Bok Tower. I’ve loved it since I first came to see it on a school field trip in 3rd grade. (My first experience of Spook Hill was on a Polk County School bus that same day.) My sister was married there 23 years ago. Many times over the years as work or trips to Camp Wingmann would bring me this way I’d take a little side trip, especially if I had people in the car who had never seen it, to the high school parking lot, which offers a pretty great view from outside the grounds.

Moving to Lake Wales, I prefer coming into town from the north on Scenic Highway rather than 27. When I see the tower, I know I’m home. And I take note of it when I’m running around town. It is really something.

Up until last Thursday, my appreciation for Bok Tower was all external: the beautiful pink Georgia marble, the mosaics and sculptures around the top, the sundial and the gold doors, the ponds with koi fish, the superbly kept gardens. Then there is the joy of beautiful music melding with the physical beauty.  More recently they’ve added the children’s play area, the education facility and the new welcome center and the café. It’s a great place, a real gem.

As much as I’ve admired it, my appreciation changed dramatically last week.  I had a meeting in a very special place, the carillonneur’s office at Bok Tower, which is way up at the top of the tower, just below the bells. 

It’s one thing to read about its construction, to see the old pictures of it going up. It’s quite another to see it from the inside. The steel frame, which looks like you’d see in skyscrapers, the size and weight of the bells they hold, is frankly stunning. The largest bell weighs 12 tons!

The carrilloneur, Geert D’Hollander, said that his office, almost 200 feet up in that tower, is the safest place to be in a hurricane. That’s no idle boast. The tower took the direct hits from 3 hurricanes in the span of just a few weeks that devastated this region and the gardens as well.  But the tower wasn’t fazed.

For all its beauty, the strength of the tower is inside, in the core. The marble and the art and the bells depend on that core. All the workers who tend to the gardens and the ponds and the buildings and the visitors all depend on that core. None of it works, none of it lasts, without that core.

There is a real challenge in that facing us, always facing us. The structures we build for the exercise of our faith, our buildings, our ordained and lay leadership structures, our liturgy depend on a core that is not made of steel but rather our grounding in faith in the one true God through his only Son Jesus Christ.

When I talk to colleagues and friends about Good Shepherd, do you know what they always ask? How big is your church?  What difference does the size make if we aren’t getting closer to Christ and actively serving him?

Or, when people visit Good Shepherd, they will always remark, “This place is beautiful.” What good would our beautiful church be if there wasn’t an active, vibrant community of faith using it to learn and grow and accomplish ministry? We also make it available for a lot of community ministries and groups throughout the year all out of that same purpose, all to serve God and his people.

Our worship is subject to the very same dynamic. What good would it be if it were not reflecting and encouraging the active faith of everyone involved both in leading and in participating.

People can very easily see the beauty of our stained glass or hear the beauty of our choir, but the real strength is on the inside. And there is an open invitation to it. The real issue is transforming lives and our community for Jesus.

It goes for individuals, too. People ask, how Meg and I are enjoying Lake Wales. (We love it!) How is it going? (Great!) But that’s not the core. Are we drawing closer to Christ and helping others to do so.  Everything else depends on our framework of faith the very same way Bok Tower depends on its steel frame.

And that is our challenge in Lent.  This Lent. Every Lent. It’s not what we show on the outside.  It is attending to the core, the framework on the inside that is entirely subjecting our wills, ourselves, our lives to Him. Our sin corrodes it like rust.

The Apostle Paul said, “Be reconciled to God.” In order to do that, the instructions are rather opposite of what we think we should to get stronger.  Our natural instinct would be to hit the spiritual gym, to build ourselves up, get tough through effort and sweat.  Try harder. That’s always the way, isn’t it? The steel beams are big and heavy so we want to lift them and put them in place. We want to weld them.

Then we hear Jesus, we see Jesus, and we learn the opposite is true, at least for the first step. We’ve got to drop our defenses, lay down our arms. Of course there is study and strengthening to be done, but the first step is to yield to Him. Repent. Return. He’s the steel.  He’s the stone, the chief cornerstone.

So how is your frame? We each have to inspect ours carefully and see where Christ needs to strengthen us.  Our prayers. Our studies. Our decisions. Our commitment to Him. Then when the storms come, as they always do, and when we face the hardest facts of our lives including death itself, our strength resides in Him.

AMEN