Living in the Now: Keeping Lent

Lenten fasting is the ultimate practice of creating space for being: deliberately making room to be with the God Who is very now-here. This is a season of being in relationship with God, rather than crossing the fine line of sacrificing a guilty pleasure to learn more about God.

My 98-year old wise mentor said we would all have our hands full for the season of Lent if we truly practiced Sabbath keeping. "Why is everyone so afraid of rest?," she asked. She's totally right.

This challenge was set before our congregation:

This Lenten season, let's consider abstaining from a source of comfort that would be a substitute for God. Let's also consider taking up the discipline of moving toward one another in community.

Both sound pretty uncomfortable. And relevant. This is my Lent to learn to blurt my opinion less often, and hear more quickly. To ask better questions of my neighbors, to make space to hear God's answers.  Practice dying to self, and to hear God's heart.

Book Review: Family Celebration at Easter, Ann Hibbard

Practical, approachable, and applicable for family devotions, this simple book is a great guide through the Lenten and Easter seasons. Used copies of Family Celebrations at Easter are selling on amazon.com for as little as a penny. Best used with children kindergarten aged and older, this devotion guides the family with a biblical based gospel. 

Each day holds a short story, reading of a biblical passage, several family discussion questions, a prayer, a hymn (arrangement is included in the back of the book), and further study ideas. To help the whole family remember the journey through the season, an appropriate symbol represents that day's passage. These symbol patterns can be scanned from the book for coloring. Other mediums can be used (felt, ornament-style for an Easter tree, collection of items from around the house, etc.). 

I appreciate that these symbols begin with a clear understanding of our need for a Savior, and then shows how God sent a Savior. Also included is specific information and a guide for celebrating Passover, or Sedar.

Overall, this is a very user friendly book for the whole family to use year after year. Having been raised on this series, and now raising my son with these symbols, I greatly treasure the accessibility, truth, and joy of God's Word.

Living in the Now: Where is Thy Sting?

Experienced beekeepers have found that occasional, regular exposure to their bee's stings is important. For many, this small exposure builds immunity to extreme reactions. Swelling, itching and pain is often less extreme for those who have such immunity. 

Ash Wednesday might be like this: a tiny, painful exposure to the sting of death. The imposition of ashes, taken from last year's palm Sunday branches now burned, is a difficult symbol to receive. In congregational silence, each hears pronounced over them, "Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return." Heaviest of all is offering your child to the pastor, for the same imposition and pronouncement. Death is so very, very heavy.

Lent is upon us, our season of waiting, preparing, repenting, listening. Seven weeks of shadow fall, each week drawing closer to the darkest day. We know the brightest light bursts forth on Easter morn, but not before the darkest dark.

“O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?” I Corinthians 15:55

Practically Speaking: Darkness

Advent and Lent make peculiar seasons. But, we are a peculiar people. One candle is lit for each of the four weeks of Advent, building a glorious crescendo to Christmas Day. "Arise, shine, for your light has come..." 

Lent can begin with seven lit candles for the upcoming seven weeks. As each week passes, one less candle is lit. Total darkness comes on Good Friday, with the brightest light on Easter morn. How rarely I let myself ponder darkness, not to mention be enveloped.

"In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters." Genesis 1:1-2

"The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it." John 1:55

"To open their eyes, so that they may turn from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are sanctified by faith in me.’" Acts 26:18

"The night is far gone; the day is at hand. So then let us cast off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light." Romans 13:12

"But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light." I Peter 2:9