Looks deceive, dead seed pods
and limbs bereft of leaves.
Grey leaden sky,
and chilling winter breeze.
We hunker down,
layered like the earth beneath.
Wondering what still lives,
what might still breathe.
But looks, they deceive.
For under the pile of cast-off broken leaves,
as quiet as the tomb,
the earth holds its breath.
And waits. Just as we awake,
breathe and stretch towards the light,
so the earth waits,
still, and expectant of life.
Yes looks deceive,
for underneath, stirring and lengthening,
are seeds, growing to bursting;
awaiting the turning seasons.
We too are mistaken,
to believe nothing is happening;
brittle hearts covered,
in last year’s debris and bracken.
Wondering how renewal and restoration,
can appear a possibility,
when all is sodden?
But lo behold, life is coming.
Like sun on snow,
our hearts begin thawing.
Like light on the hills,
spring ascends the horizon.
Not one moment too soon, nor too late,
in arriving.
Ana Lisa de Jong
Living Tree Poetry
Andy Wade –
Yesterday was International Women’s Day. I want to thank all the women who, over the years, have guided, challenged, taught, nurtured, and blessed me. I can only imagine what a mess I’d be without all of you in my life. (not to mention I wouldn’t even be without my mom!)
This got me thinking again about the importance of balance in our lives. The “Yin and Yang” that brings harmony to the whole creation. God created man and woman in God’s image, not separate, but together. Balance is really at the heart of Lent and Easter. God desires harmony, a dwelling together in peace and unity. Lent provides us the opportunity to explore what is out of sync in our lives.
Where are the fragmented and broken pieces and how did they get that way? This is often a question I wrestle with. As painful as this process may be, I must look deep inside. The cross reveals the extreme measures God will go to in order to see us made whole. It’s typical in our western culture to focus on the individual meaning of the cross, that “personal salvation”. But we can’t get to that point without first realizing that in Christ, God is reconciling all things.
By exploring my own brokenness and beginning to work toward healing, I lay the foundation for healing beyond myself. My anger is not isolated to me. My lust is not of myself. My desire for control extends to the world around me. My pride is my ego asserting itself over another. To be reconciled to God is to begin the process of reconciliation to self, and that process requires reconciliation to the people and whole creation around me.
If Lent is merely a season of giving up, of personal sacrifice, but does not point me to the cross and resurrection, it becomes a rather self-indulgent season. It becomes lopsided and unbalanced. But Lent is not about me, it’s about us. Lent is allowing the truth of God in Christ reconciling all things to sink deep into my soul and uncover my points of resistance to that truth. Laying bare my motivations, my prejudices, my fears, and anxieties, I become more available to God’s purposes within, and around me.
Where are you finding balance this Lent?
Rebecca Sumner —
I’m eking this out down to the wire. I thought I’d write this lilting article way in advance. It would be well researched. It would be poetic. Original. Challenging. Honest. It will be honest. It may not be any of those other things. It certainly will not be early.
And I used to be all those other things. I used to write often and well. I used to dream of writing a book. As a pastor, my liturgies and sermons used to be meticulous, seamless, beautiful, extravagant, every movement dripping with meaning. And for the last year, I just haven’t. My last real blog post was almost a year ago.
Something happened a year ago. Something amazing. The best thing that ever happened to me. And when it happened, I also lost some of my favorite pieces of me. I lost a lot. I’m told by others who have had similar costly miracles that it will come back in time. A good friend told me not to expect to be myself again for three years. But then, I’ll come back.
So, what happened a year ago? A year ago – to the day – I was ushering my daughter into the world. She didn’t make it in time for International Women’s Day. She took another three hours to get here. But I spent International Women’s Day doing the hardest – most costly and most wonderful – work I’ve done in my life. And three hours later I met the most wonderful person in the world. (I’m biased, I realize, but you might agree if you met her.)
Recently, Christine Sine wrote something about Lent and birth: “We give up so that something new can be birthed.” She invited us to consider the things that we would like to see birthed in and through us in this season leading up to Easter. The focus was definitely on the birthing. But as I read her words, I couldn’t help but also sit with the giving up. With all the love in my heart for the person I birthed, I couldn’t help but sit with the giving up, and weep.
When things are born, the world changes. It will never be the same. When we give birth to something, we change. If it is something as miraculous as my daughter – or as a fruitful ministry, or as a new understanding of what love and justice might look like in our world – if it is something miraculous, it makes big changes. It brings newness and life, but it also demands something of us.
My friend told me that, in three years, I’ll feel like myself again. I believe her. I also don’t believe her. I am forever changed. And in a season full of paradoxes, within a faith tradition full of paradoxes – where death is slain through death and new heights of aliveness comes from the end of a life – there is joy and there is grief in being forever changed.
My daughter is the among greatest things that have happened to me. Easter is among the greatest things that have happened to the world. As many of us are awakening to our privilege, the need for greater love and justice, the hard work to do on the road to love and justice, I truly believe this difficult road we are all on will turn out to be one of the greatest things that happened to us collectively. If even an ounce of justice is born through us this Lenten season, if even an instant of love is cradled in our arms by Easter, if even one soul finds some sort of liberation, the birth is well worth the giving up. And yet, there is grief in the giving up.
Today on International Women’s Day, I want to invite us to let ourselves grieve. What have the various metaphorical or literal births in our lives cost us? What have others given up to birth newness in and through you? What did God give up to birth a whole new abundant kind of life for all of us?
On this International Women’s Day, I am struck by the absolute beauty and pain – privilege and cost – of living as a woman in this world, where so much needs to be birthed and so much must be given up. I am struck by the goodness and costliness of being a person in this world and this faith tradition, where God gives of God’s self and we in turn give of ourselves to bring crescendoing newness, life, and goodness into the world. But the birth always comes with a giving up. And the giving up always comes to birthing.
I’d say “Al—uia,” but we save those for Easter, for the first breath of the new birth. But I will say “Amen.”
Rebecca Joy Sumner is a christian, pastor, liturgist, abolitionist, wife, neighbor, church planter, writer (ish), theologian (ish), artist (ish), and basically just someone who playfully clings to this radical thing called hope — specifically, hope that God’s commonwealth of love and justice to come more and more with every new day. She is lead pastor as Our Common Table in Everett, WA.
This year the 1st of March sees Ash Wednesday, the beginning of the period preceding Easter known as Lent. Lent is the 40 day period before Easter recalling Jesus’ temptations in the wilderness. Though practised slightly differently in the Eastern and Western churches, it is marked by a time of spiritual preparation including fasting, whether from food or from other things such as smoking, television or social media. It is a time to reassess our priorities and seek to simplify our lives. In the church I am in we have challenges set throughout Lent based on simplifying our use of money, the care of our bodies, our minds, our schedules, our relationships, and prayer.
The principle here of course is that we seek to foster self-discipline. Nowadays, Lent has often become slightly frivolous – giving up chocolate for Lent for example, more for health reasons (or perhaps to enjoy an Easter egg even more when Easter Sunday comes!) More ominously, it can turn into the opposite of what it was intended to be – becoming an opportunity for self-aggrandisement and a fostering of the kind of public and self-righteous self-promotion which Jesus spoke out against very strongly.
It seems to me we are in danger of missing the point (something Christians can occasionally specialise in!) If we think back to the original story of the temptations, they are a story of Jesus battling not so much to say no (though it involved that) but to say “Yes”. Saying no to plans which would have been what everyone predicted and would have welcomed – providing material needs (stones to bread), doing the spectacular (throw yourself from the temple), get power the wrong way (bow down to worship the devil and share in his (non-existent) lordship of the world). But – much more importantly – it was about Jesus saying YES! Yes to the plan of God which was surprising, sacrificial, but ultimately able to transform us into people who look like him.
So – are you giving up anything for Lent this year? Or changing anything else? If so, I hope you can make space to make it not so much as no, but a yes to something new that God might have for you. That, surely, is much more what the adventure of discovery that Lent is intended to be?
Last week I asked the question What are you afraid of? I shared a couple of stories from friends about their fears and how they overcome them. What I did not share was my own story out of fear, partly because it is a very personal story, yet as I begin my journey through Lent it is here that God is leading me and it is out of this that I painted the rock in the prayer above. The “cross” in it is an outline of a darker pigment in the rock, that I first noticed when I picked up the rock a couple of years ago. As I examined it again this year, the cross beckoned to me. First it reminds me that if I keep silent the very rocks will cry out of the love of God. Second it reminds me that the love of God, expressed in Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross is hidden in many aspects of life and many parts of creation, just waiting to be noticed and brought to light.
What am I Afraid of?
As I prayerfully thought about this question what came to mind is my fear of being alone when I grow old. In some ways it is a legitimate fear. My husband Tom is 15 years older than I am, I have no children and my family is half a world away in Australia.
I think my fear originates from my experiences as a premature baby. I spent the first month of my life in hospital. My mother did not even see me until she brought me home. Not surprisingly I have always suffered from fears of being abandoned, left alone, disowned by my family.
None of these things have ever happened, but as we all know, fear is irrational.
As I pondered my fear I knew that even when I felt alone and isolated in that hospital incubator, God was with me. God nurtured and strengthened me so that I grew healthy and strong. My mother loved me and expressed her breast milk each day for me to drink. Prem, unexpected, difficult but still loved.
What Would I Do If I Was Not Afraid?
This was a very important question for me to ask myself at the beginning of my Lenten journey.
If I was not afraid I would see that I am never alone because God is always with me. I would nurture a deeper and more intimate relationship with God for the days ahead.
I would learn to appreciate more the community God has allowed me to be a part of – both those that live in our small residential community and those that don’t but that still provide friendship, love and caring.
I would nurture the relationships with my family, geographically distant though they may be as I know that these too will be important in the future.
How Could God’s Love Overcome this Fear?
No fear is legitimate I realize, not when we believe in a God who is everywhere and in everything, and certainly when I am surround by as much love and caring as I am.
As I began my Bible search on the word love this passage from Proverbs 3:3-5 (The Message) stood out for me:
Don’t lose your grip on (God’s) Love and Loyalty.
Tie them around your neck; carve their initials on your heart.
Earn a reputation for living well
in God’s eyes and the eyes of the people.
Trust God from the bottom of your heart;
don’t try to figure out everything on your own.
Listen for God’s voice in everything you do, everywhere you go;
he’s the one who will keep you on track.
So I come today repenting of my lack of recognition of the love around me and the ways I have, at times, lost my grip on God’s love and loyalty. Sometimes I have pushed this love away and rejected the One who always holds me tenderly as in a mother’s arms.
I have failed to appreciate the love of my heavenly father who has protected me from all the risky adventures of my life – like climbing mountains, working in refugee camps and travelling alone around the globe.
I have failed to fully enter into the generosity of God’s love, which has provided for me through all the tough and all the abundant economic times of my life.
I have failed to trust that my times are indeed in God’s hands and rested in the belief that all the love that has surrounded me since my conception will continue to surround me until my death.
I have failed to embrace the capacity of the love of my God who calls me a beloved daughter
For I have every confidence that nothing—not death, life, heavenly messengers, dark spirits, the present, the future, spiritual powers, height, depth, nor any created thing—can come between us and the love of God revealed in the Anointed, Jesus our Lord. (Romans 8:38,39, The Voice)
What is Your Response.
How long is it since you fully immersed yourself in the love of God. Watch the video below and think about the many ways in which God loves you. Is there a response that God is asking of you?
Giving God,
what do I give up,
this Lent?
For you
who remind me that
everything you have
given us is lent.
Fashioned
only for what,
it was meant.
A reason, a season or a day.
Everything is yours to give,
and take a way.
Giving God,
what do I release to you
this Lent?
My questions,
my answers, and
the prayers uttered
until I am spent.
Wondering
why do you not
give us what we want?
Instead you will
that we should give
to you our all.
That empty,
we might count our benefits.
“A Lent missed is a year lost from the spiritual life.”
Father Charles Owen Moore
Traditionally Lent is a time of fasting, self-denial, and simplicity, a time set apart for prayer and self-examination, repentance and renewal. It is a call to focus our lives on God’s purposes, to respond fully to God’s initiative, a season whose purpose is to draw us closer to God. Sister Wendy Beckett in her book Sister Wendy’s Meditations on the Mysteries of Our Faith writes:
Lent asks us to scrutinize, calmly and in the presence of God what direction our actions have led us and will lead us. Are we directed toward God? Or toward ourselves? Do we forgive? Do we pray? Do we try to be patient?
Jesus encourages us to focus our lives on God by steeping our “life in God-reality, God-initiative, God-provisions” (Matt. 6:33 Msg).
One way we steep in God-reality is to set aside time and space for prayer, reflection and to listen to God. Connection to God grounds us in the truth of who God is and who we are. We desperately need this grounding in a culture that is obsessed with self. Often when we look at ourselves it’s as if we’re gazing into a distorted mirror; either we exaggerate our faults and limitations and minimize our good qualities or we are over-confident in our abilities and blind to our limitations.
Steeping in God-reality we discover God knows our weakness and shortcomings but also knows our possibilities and potential. This allows us to look at our sin and brokenness remembering the truth of who, and whose, we are. Seeing ourselves in the light of God’s love enables us to move forward holding both our brokenness and our belovedness and to respond to God’s initiative in the present moment more freely and openly.
The image of steeping invites us to give God time and space to deepen our faith and produce fruit that is worthwhile. Many of us live as if a quick dip of a tea bag in lukewarm water is going to produce something worth drinking. Steeping can’t be rushed. Waiting for God’s initiative invites us to let go of working so hard.
Steeping our lives in what God is doing we no longer feel so much pressure to figure everything out and to be superstar Christians. “For we are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life” (Eph. 2:10). Knowing that God goes before us Jesus invites us to give our “entire attention to what God is doing right now ”(Matt. 6:34 Msg).
Giving our attention to what God is doing in the present moment we align ourselves with his purposes rather than asking him to join us in what we want to do. Living this way we discover God is already at work and “acts on behalf of those who wait for him” (Isaiah 64.4 Msg). Thus we learn by experience to have confidence in God and can go into our broken, crazy mixed up world and give away what we’ve received firsthand from God—grace, mercy, kindness and love.
Steeping our lives in God’s provision keeps us aware and grateful. It helps us remember who and whose we are. In John 1:3 we read that “everything was created through him; nothing—not one thing! — came into being without him. In Colossians 1:17, Paul reminds us:
We look at this Son and see God’s original purpose in everything created. For everything, absolutely everything, above and below, visible and invisible, rank after rank after rank of angels—everything got started in him and finds its purpose in him. He was there before any of it came into existence and holds it all together right up to this moment.
God has given us life and has even given his only son, Jesus, who gave his life to bring us back into right relationship with God the Father. Steeping our lives in God’s provision allows us to consider and “see how all that is good and every gift descends from on high…as rays descend from the sun, waters from a fountain”.
James 1:17 from the Message puts it this way, “Every desirable and beneficial gift comes out of heaven. The gifts are rivers of light cascading down from the Father of Light.” All the good and beauty we see, know, and experience comes from God’s hand. All holiness on earth is the fragrance of God present in and with us.
One way to steep in God’s provision is to spend time outside seeing the sunlight illuminating creation, feeling its warmth on your body and imagining how God is creating and bathing you in his love. Steeping our lives in God-reality, God-initiative and God-provision encourages us to desire to love God with our whole mind, heart and soul, to become the friend God wants us to be.
May your Lenten journey be a season of renewal and growth as you steep your life in who God is, what he is doing, and the gifts and graces of the present moment.
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