Category: Lent

Lent Sunday One

lent Our reflection for the first Sunday of Lent this year comes from Daniel.

So I turned to the Lord God and pleaded with him in prayer and petition, in fasting, and in sackcloth and ashes.

I prayed to the Lord my God and confessed:

“O Lord, the great and awesome God, who keeps his covenant of love with all who love him and obey his commands, we have sinned and done wrong. We have been wicked and have rebelled; we have turned away from your commands and laws. We have not listened to your servants the prophets, who spoke in your name to our kings, our princes and our fathers, and to all the people of the land.

“Lord, you are righteous, but this day we are covered with shame—the men of Judah and people of Jerusalem and all Israel, both near and far, in all the countries where you have scattered us because of our unfaithfulness to you. O Lord, we and our kings, our princes and our fathers are covered with shame because we have sinned against you. The Lord our God is merciful and forgiving, even though we have rebelled against him; we have not obeyed the Lord our God or kept the laws he gave us through his servants the prophets. (Daniel 9:3-10)

Peace be with you.

Lent with Joel

Our reflection today is short and simple; the call of the Lord is for all of His children to return to Him from whatever distance we have placed between us.

“Even now,” declares the Lord,

“return to me with all your heart,

with fasting and weeping and mourning.”

Rend your heart

and not your garments.

Return to the Lord your God,

for he is gracious and compassionate,

slow to anger and abounding in love,

and he relents from sending calamity. (Joel 2:12-13)

The sacrifice of our Lord and His grace are the only things that enable us to return to the security of His arms. This season reminds us of this sacrificial action and the love in which it is rooted. Be blessed today.

Lent with Leonard

The Church can ask herself today, is this what our Savior sacrificed His life for? Did He give us the Church so that we can be comfortable, occasionally running guerilla missions out into the world and then returning to the safety of the sanctuary? As I think about the spiritual state of much of today’s Church, I am reminded of Ravenhill’s words:

The true man of God is heartsick, Grieved at the worldliness of the Church,

Grieved at the blindness of the Church, Grieved at the corruption in the Church,

Grieved at the toleration of sin in the Church, Grieved at the prayerlessness in the Church.

He is disturbed that the corporate prayer of the Church no longer pulls down the strongholds of the devil.

He is embarrassed that the Church folks no longer cry in their despair before a devil-ridden, sin mad society, “Why could we not cast him out?” (Mt 17:19)

Before we pray for the change in others, let us each pray for the transformation of ourselves. Let the tears come searing hot down our cheeks at the mockery our own lives make of the holiness that grace offers to us. Let it begin with me.

Lent Begins

Traditionally, we surrender a creature comfort or habit as a way of associating our lives with the impending sacrifice and suffering of our Savior. We willingly give up a behavior, a food, or something similar in sacrifice, longing for Easter’s arrival not only to celebrate the resurrection but the freedom to return the sacrifice to our lives. I want to invite us to take a different approach to the coming 46 days this year and seek to grow in holiness, not through a temporary sacrifice, but through the rending of our hearts. Our reflections will move us from loss to promise, much as Isaiah’s prophecy brings his readers from exile to restoration. This passage sets the tone for our prayers to come:

Strengthen the feeble hands,

steady the knees that give way;

4 say to those with fearful hearts,

“Be strong, do not fear;

your God will come,

he will come with vengeance;

with divine retribution

he will come to save you.”

5 Then will the eyes of the blind be opened

and the ears of the deaf unstopped.

6 Then will the lame leap like a deer,

and the mute tongue shout for joy.

Water will gush forth in the wilderness

and streams in the desert.

7 The burning sand will become a pool,

the thirsty ground bubbling springs.

In the haunts where jackals once lay,

grass and reeds and papyrus will grow.

8 And a highway will be there;

it will be called the Way of Holiness.

The unclean will not journey on it;

it will be for those who walk in that Way;

wicked fools will not go about on it.

9 No lion will be there,

nor will any ferocious beast get up on it;

they will not be found there.

But only the redeemed will walk there,

10 and the ransomed of the Lord will return.

They will enter Zion with singing;

everlasting joy will crown their heads.

Gladness and joy will overtake them,

and sorrow and sighing will flee away.

Isaiah 35:3-10

Coming Down from the Hillside – Good Friday Reflection

When Jesus had finished saying these things, the crowds were amazed at his teaching, because he taught as one who had authority, and not as their teachers of the law.

When Jesus clambered down the hillside after delivering the final words of His sermon, we can feel the silence envelop him. All those eyes and ears that had been challenged to a radically new way of living in the Kingdom of Heaven heard and saw the quiet as well. There was nothing further to be said, His authority had been so complete that the people were amazed. What must have run through their minds? Were they angry at having been deceived by their teachers, who said one thing and did another?

Our meditation today on the Cross, where Jesus gave the greatest sacrifice for all of humankind, points us back through the whole of the Sermon on the Mount. Just as He lived out John 15:12-13, His ministry leading up to the cross gave example to all of the words of His sermon. Are you and I able to say the same thing? Our belief governs our actions and our trust in Jesus and His promises drive how radically we live out our vocation.

This is a somber day, marked by the candle being extinguished and the darkness instantly surrounding us, but it is not a day without hope. Sunday is coming…

 

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Higher on the Hillside – Lent Reflection 26

“Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.”

Jesus the Encourager begins the closing thoughts of his incredible sermon. He knows that the radical challenges that he has issued regarding the transformed nature of His followers in the upside-down kingdom of heaven will only be taken up by a few. Surely, some must have wondered why he doesn’t make the road home easier. The answer of course, is that He is going to by sending the Paraclete in His place to guide those who believe down the narrow road.

These meditations grow shorter as the time grows closer for our remembrance of the cross and all that it means. Each brings us nearer to a realization that we are fully dependent on the grace and mercy of our Glorious Lord. None of us has the power to change our hearts on our own, we must submit them to the transforming work of the Holy Spirit. The wide road tempts but the Spirit guides us down that rocky narrow way, the only one that leads back home.

 

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Higher on the Hillside – Lent Reflection 25

“So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets.”

Radical Jesus gives the first of the summary statements in His sermon by giving the Golden Rule for how we are to treat one another. Its utter simplicity is meant to cut through all of the ‘religion’ that has wrapped itself around the message that God wants His people to hear; love God and love others. When you love the Lord with all your heart, your actions towards others created in His image will fall into place. Radical in its minimalism.

This single verse is so radical that we often struggle to live it out. It is hard to give up our desires for revenge and retribution. We want to live the golden rule but we fear others who refuse to live it out themselves and this lies at the crux of the problem. The fear creeps in that we will lose in some respect when we live the way Jesus teaches and others do not but the Teacher gives us the solution, don’t be concerned with your condition here in this world. Raise your sights to the heavens where sacrifice will not be needed. Follow the Radical in His sacrifice knowing where your true reward lies.

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Higher on the Hillside – Lent Reflection 24

 “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks fins; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened.”

Jesus, as he begins to conclude His Sermon on the Mount, urges His disciples to a greater communion in prayer with the Father. He radically commends them (us) to committing all of our life, every portion and quadrant of it, to the Father in prayer. He does not proffer this option in order to make more Pharisees; on the contrary. The Radical Jesus pushes us to realize the value and importance of an intimate relationship with the One Who Loves Us.

We find ourselves in the midst of Passion Week this morning, immediately following our recall of the triumphal entry. We discovered the danger in misguided expectations. As the palm leaves waved to cries of “Hosanna”, the people desperately wanted to believe in a restoration of a worldly kingdom with Jesus as their king. He radically wanted people to raise their sights, to see a kingdom of higher principles. He wants the same thing for us today and He wants us to root this higher perspective in a life of dependence and prayer. Read the assurances again…and again.

 

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Higher on the Hillside – Lent Meditation 23

“Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.”

How many times have we wished that Radical Jesus had never spoken these words? Our hearts have a hair trigger to recognize the faults of our brothers and sisters but we are blind to our faults and we often don’t hesitate to point these faults out loudly. Certainly, we think, we have the right, NO! the responsibility to tell our brother when he has failed. Our faults? Well, those are our personal issues that are above your reproach because I have submitted them to the Lord.

Jesus points us in a different direction, a radical direction. He lays claim to being the only One able to judge the hearts of men and women. His perfection gives Him the sole right to stand above our broken lives and remind us, gently or not, of our failings. Fortunately, he doesn’t leave us in our pathetic state. Once He gets our eyes off of our brother and onto Him, the Radical One leads us to a higher order of awareness. Be blessed my brothers and sisters.

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