Picture by Tom Sine
By Tom Sine
“Hitting the reset button” is one way to think about preparing for the Season of Lent suggested Cherry Haisten at our Ash Wednesday Service at Saint Andrews here in Seattle. She added that for many of us it can be a more serious time to make a new beginning than we achieve with our new year’s resolutions on January 1.
Lent provides an opportunity to look at ourselves honestly. It provides a chance to release attachments that pull us away from God, those we love and our best selves. It is also an opportunity to live our lives with more intentionality creating new ways to use our time and money for what matters most.
In my new book, Live Like You Give A Damn! Join the Changemaking Celebration, which will be published in April, I observe that many of us could be missing out on living our best lives. Too often it feels like our churches seem to become chaplains to the dominant culture…simply helping us limp through the week instead of empowering us to live our best lives.
As we hit the reset button for Lent 2016 we have the opportunity to make changes in our time styles to be more present to God and those we love. We also have the opportunity to carve out space in our lives to join those in the change making celebration who are creating new ways to empower our most vulnerable neighbors. I guarantee you will enjoy this Lenten activity much more that giving up Lattes or chocolate!
Last year in his address Guide to Lent: What You Should Give Up This Year.” http://time.com/3714056/pope-francis-lent-2015-fasting/ Pope Francis stated that more important than fasting from candy or alcohol is fasting from “our indifference towards others”.
I urge you to join those, like Pope Francis, that are enjoying Lent more than ever before because they are creating innovative new ways to live like they give a damn!
About 7 months ago, we moved into my parent’s home, as they were relocating into the country. At the front gate of Berg ‘n Zee are two bushes to greet you and these were beautifully kept standards, until we moved in. And forgot to water them!
The bush pictured on the right is under the shade of mirror bush trees; so that one continued to flourish. But the one on the left exposed to the bright sun and elements, over a period of time began to show signs of neglect. The ever slowly browning leaves of the little wild cherry didn’t manage to arrest our attention. It was only when the leaves turned completely brown (and my parents were coming back for a visit) that I finally began to take notice! I used a pair of sicoteurs to remove the incriminating evidence! And shaped it into a little bush of grey twigs. That was all that was left. Except for one remaining twig with a few sparse leaves left hanging on.
Yet this gave me hope. I thought, it looks dead, but that one twig, just maybe it will revive? And so I started to water it. So did my Dad when they came to stay. And miracle of miracles, little green leaves started to push up from those seemingly dead twigs and life slowly returned. So we went from a place of my Mom offering to get us a new bush… to coming to realise that this one was indeed going to make it. It is now covered with new leaves, and happily connected to the sprinkling system, so will not suffer the same fate in time to come!
This little bush has become our parable of resurrection this year. A sign and a wonder, that God can take something that looks to be on its last legs (or twigs) and cause life to return to the branches, leaves to sprout, and a bush to return to the land of the living. “Though its roots have grown old in the earth and its stump decays, at the scent of water it will bud and sprout again like a new seedling.” Job 14:8-9.
In the film Enchanted April, based on the book by Elizabeth Von Arnim , a group of ladies comes together seemingly by chance to a castle, San Salvatore, in Italy for a holiday, each of them having their own reasons to be there. They came in different states of the dishevelling of life, but slowly the lake and garden, the medieval castle and the magic of it all, brings them together as they start to decrust and heal. There is a quote from this book that recurs to me time and again, “…The great thing is to have lots of love about.”
One character in the story is an old woman who only lives to talk about what famous people meant to her, people who have all subsequently passed away. A cantankerous lady, she slowly turns around and becomes refreshed, like our little bush, as love is continuously offered her in an unconditional way. Her grumpy manners give way to a whole new approach to the world. On the way back home, as they walk down the road from San Salvatore, this woman pushes her long depended upon walking stick into the ground at the edge of the path. A stick that was an excuse, now pushed into the earth at San Salvatore… becomes what? The final picture of the film sees this stick budding, branching out and growing flowers and leaves!
At church recently, a word was shared about Lazarus. A wonderful tall African man shared with us all. When Jesus came to the tomb, Martha said, “Lord he has been dead for four days. The smell will be terrible.” And yet, Jesus said, “Didn’t I tell you that you would see God’s glory if you believe?” So they rolled the stone aside. (See John 11).
The word this man shared was that God has removed the stone from every impossible situation of our lives and will call things that feel impossible and dead, into resurrection life. Jesus is the Resurrection and the Life! The stone has been rolled away! No longer is there a stone in the way of what God wants to do. So we can call forth the resurrection of God into situations with a hearty, “Come forth! Come out of the tomb! Take off the grave clothes.”
Perhaps the grave clothes are not for the burial of dead things after all. Perhaps the grave clothes are only a cocoon and the things that feel lost are being allowed a time of metamorphosis so that they can come into a new season of life, changed by the very breath of God as the cocoon peels away. When we come to the end of our capabilities and the end of our plans to turn things around, there is a perfect opportunity for God to work. It is often when I have come to the end of myself that I have seen God show up and do what only He can do! And then I know, it’s nothing of my own doing or of human capability, but only of God’s doing!
In Ezekiel 37 we read a powerful word given to a valley of dead bones. (NLT & The Message)
“Son of man, can these bones become living people again?”
“ O Sovereign Lord, you alone know the answer to that.”
“Prophesy over these bones: Dry bones, listen to the Message of God!
Watch this: I’m bringing the breath of life to you and you’ll come to life. I’ll attach sinews to you, put meat on your bones, cover you with skin, and breathe life into you. You’ll come alive and you’ll realise that I am God!”
I prophesied just as I’d been commanded. As I prophesied, there was a sound and, oh, rustling! The bones moved and came together, bone to bone. I kept watching. Sinews formed, then muscles on the bones, then skin stretched over them. But they had no breath in them. He said to me, “Prophesy to the breath. Prophesy son of man. Tell the breath, ‘God, the Master says, Come from the four winds, Come breath. Breathe on these slain bodies. Breathe life!’”
So I prophesied, just as he commanded me. The breath entered them and they came alive! They stood up on their feet, a huge army. Listen to what they’re saying, “Our bones are dried up, our hope is gone, there’s nothing left of us.” Therefore prophesy. Tell them God the Master says, ‘I’ll dig up your graves and bring you out alive – O my people! I’ll breathe my life into you and you’ll live.’”
In Mozambique there is a place called Iris Ministries in Pemba. Heidi and Rolland Baker founded this ministry through great hardship and they have seen God come through for them time and again. To the place where there have been numbers of documented resurrections from the dead and many miracles of healing, the blind seeing, deaf hearing… food being multiplied. “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” Matthew 5:3.
I know that the God who manifests His presence in these ways in Mozambique, is the same God in our lives day to day wherever we may be in the world. And I offer myself up to Him, all that feels in need of His touch, my state of health, my wild-hearted dreams that seem somewhat impossible to see realised on this earth… everything. My family, friends, my country South Africa, the nations of the earth, all hungry hearts and bodies, the people of this world I offer up to the Resurrection and the Life: COME FORTH! COME OUT! LIVE!
With man these things may seem impossible, but with God all things are possible.
So what are you hungry for? Blessed are those who hunger…and thirst…for righteousness for they will be filled. (Matthew 5:6) They…will…be…filled. As we approach this Lenten season, may we too be surprised with child-like wonder, as we find that it is with the faith of a child that we will inherit the kingdom. And children are always open to miracles.
Let us be awakened Lord, to the scent of the waters of your Spirit, to feel the sap flow through us once again, and to suddenly find, that new green leaves sprout out of what we thought were only dead branches. You will do the work as we come to you Christ, our Resurrection. Amen.
As you listen to these songs, may every area of your life receive the life-giving resurrection of the Spirit.
Fall on Me – Vineyard Worship
Come Alive (Dry Bones) – Lauren Daigle
Pillow by Andy Wade
By Andy Wade
Lent begins. I opened Christine Sine and Jean Andrianoff’s “Hungering for Life: Creative Exercises for Lent” and read these words for this week: “Faith is the confidence that what we hope for will actually happen; it gives us assurance about things we cannot see”. (Hebrews 11:1, NLT)
Immediately in my mind I traveled back to seminary, sitting in a class taught by Eugene Peterson. It was there I first heard the idea that day begins when we lie down to rest. Each day starts while we sleep, with God faithfully at work preparing our day. When we wake, we walk into something God has already begun. This may not be news to any of you, but at the time it was revolutionary for me.
So much of God remains hidden from our eyes and yet, day after day after day, God prepares. “New every morning” are his mercies. So often I lose sight of this truth. I wake – after a couple cups of coffee – with a list of things to take care of. Even before that last sip, my mind is swirling with the busyness of the day ahead. It’s so easy to forget to ask God, “What have you prepared for me today?”
So as I continue to reflect this week I will remember; the first business of preparation is God’s, not mine. Faith, the assurance that even before the crust from my sleepy eyes breaks open, God is there. God is here. God has prepared a new day for me to walk into.
If this were just an individual truth, it would be quite amazing. But as the coffee takes effect and my eyes begin to focus, I realize this is bigger than me, this is truth for all creation. God is weaving together a new day for the whole creation. Faith reminds me that God, in Christ Jesus, is reconciling all things. Creator God is still creating, weaving life and lives together. Knowing this I can begin the day as a child, fully trusting that what God is up to will be grand and beautiful.
But on Ash Wednesday, as we prayed the Lord’s Prayer together, I again trembled at the words, “Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us”. Confronted by the turmoil within, I jotted down these words: “The same Lord who commanded us to love our enemies also taught us to pray, ‘Forgive us our sins in the same way we forgive those who sin against us,’ and I shudder.”
As I reflect now, I’m less disturbed. That idea still makes me tremble, but now I have a bigger hope, an assurance of things not seen. Even now in me, God is silently at work. God is cultivating the soil of my soul while I rest, preparing me to walk fully, faithfully, into the promise of shalom for the whole creation. If we dare to believe, we become both recipient and participant in the greatest gift of God.
Hungering for life is fully possible when we embrace God’s order for the day. The world may rage and the creation groan, but God, each night, is preparing a way toward shalom.
Cross by Kymme (courtesy of Morguefile)
By Rowan Wyatt
Matthew 25
“Ten girls were waiting for the bridegroom, lamps in hand to light his way when he arrived, but five of them hadn’t prepared and were not ready for his arrival”.
So begins the famous parable in the Gospel of Matthew. A cautionary story about making sure you are ready when the time comes, at the return of Jesus, the end of things. I also look at it as a Lenten parable, looking at the time from Ash Wednesday to Easter Sunday where we as Christians are to prepare ourselves for the risen Christ.
Lent is a time of preparation and taking stock of your life and spiritual journey, looking at yourself as in a full length mirror and taking it all in. Looking at yourself as Jesus sees you, a loved child for sure but also draped with yellow warning tape reading “Still Under Construction”. There is always work to do in you and while care should be taken to continue this progress daily in our lives, Lent gives us a real opportunity to dig in, making sure we are as prepared as possible.
I propose your arsenal for the time of Lent to consist of three things: – A Bible, a mental shovel and a spiritual broom. These tools will help with the six life-giving disciplines of Lent: prayer, penance, repentance, alms-giving, atonement and self-denial.
Lent is a time to dig deep. Use that mental shovel to work your way deeper in prayer and build firmer foundations with God, a relationship with the Father in Heaven. Eschew the quick-fire prayer of the “don’t have the time” brigade and make time for God. Dig past the surface further and look deeper into your own heart and prayerfully seek penance and repentance. This will be tough work indeed and will cause some blisters and a few tears along the way, especially in the act of atonement, but these acts will become the cement in the foundations of that Godly relationship between Father and child, as in the parable of the prodigal son.
We all, most of us, give regularly to charities of one kind or another. If this is something you don’t do, then Lent is the perfect time to start. Dig deep and pray about which charity and how much financially or even how much time physically, you can afford. Alms giving can be just as valuable if it is volunteering for a few hours at a shelter or program, sometimes more so. The gifting is returned with each freely given sacrifice, time or money, with a sense of spiritual joy and a relieved feeling of a job well done, especially when the fruits of the alms giving is observed. The giving, freely, of such mercy is a part of this preparation period and is wholly recommended.
So now we come to a Lenten sticking point, self-denial.
For so many Lent has become a time to give up chocolate, having a beer whilst watching a game, eat fewer steaks etc, and while for some these can actually be very important, life changing acts, they are not the entirety of the Lenten pilgrimage. Self-denial is so much more than that and it is a very deep, powerful act that should never be used as just an excuse to lose a bit of weight just to feel slightly better about oneself. No, self-denial is an important discipline that helps firm those foundations of the relationship with God.
The act of self-denial should be a full inventory in the mind of everything you do that you know is not right. Viewing salacious material, casual blasphemy, hatred, anger, lust, theft, the list goes on and only you can know which thought patterns, daily habitual sins, need to be swept away and dumped in the trash can, thus bringing in another aspect of repentance. Fasting is a good thing and should be encouraged during this period, including giving up chocolate or beer if that is something you wish to do but just don’t make that one thing the epitome of your Lenten journey.
“All ten girls had fallen asleep waiting for the Bridegroom to arrive and when he was spotted they roused. The five who had prepared for his arrival lit their lamps while the other five hurried about trying to rush the job, to no avail. The girls with the lit lamps were invited into the banquet while the others were shut outside”. Matthew 25 my paraphrasing.
So make ready. This Lenten period equip yourself and being the six-week journey to welcome the risen Christ in prepared mind, body and spirit.
by Andy Wade
Lent is often thought of as a dark, introspective season. Voluntarily I give up, for a season, some part of my life to help me focus on “the journey”. Perhaps it’s chocolate, or coffee, or Facebook, or dining out. Multiple Lenten seasons I’ve participated in this way… and it’s been helpful. But this year I sensed a call in a different direction.
Going back to the roots of Lent, we discover that it was a season for new Christians to be intentionally discipled in preparation for baptism on Easter Sunday. For others it was a season to reflect and prepare to renew their baptismal vows. This season makes time for a serious look inside, facing our inner brokenness and changing our ways (in church lingo, repenting from sin).
This is also a season to seriously meditate on the journey of Jesus toward the cross – his complete abandonment to the plan and purposes of God, which ultimately led to his death on the cross. To ponder the weight of the world’s sin and brokenness that Jesus carried, my sin and brokenness that Jesus carried, to the cross should indeed be a deep and life-changing venture.
Some would argue that we no longer need to focus on this, that now it’s all about the resurrection and life, and to focus on the cross and sin and death is too negative and even demeans the point of Jesus’ resurrection. And yet we journey. If we’re honest with ourselves, we know that life is still broken and full of sin, even as the promise of new life and resurrection is held out to everyone who would receive it.
As I prepared my heart for this season of Lent, I found myself wrestling with what it’s really all about. So often I give up something or change some element of life for the season which does help my focus, but then I pick it back up… coffee, chocolate, Facebook… and enter the season of Easter feeling more spiritual – but not really changed.
So this year I began wondering how Lent could truly become a season of transformation. If Lent is a season to prepare for baptism or the renewal of my baptismal vows, what does that mean? If it’s all pointing to new life in Christ, shouldn’t my life be changed, not just reflected on? So I’ve kind of turned Lent inside out, looking more at what I’m challenged by Jesus to live into. It’s not just the resurrection, it’s all about new life that embraces the reign of God.
- How do I live into the shalom of God in ways that bring about healing, hope, justice, reconciliation, and love?
- Where am I already living into this new reality of God’s reign?
- Where am I resisting?
- What things in my life actually hinder me from leaping fully into the risky business of following Jesus?
- What areas of my life encourage me to live into radical discipleship, and how can I nurture those areas?
What I’m discovering is that I need to begin with the end in order to discover what I must give up… or nurture. The deep introspection and resulting repentance are not a bad thing, but they need to have purpose beyond the 40 days of Lent. In fact I would argue that cultivating a truly transformative Lenten practice actually develops in us a healthy life-long discipline that looks honestly at our brokenness and need for the healing of Jesus, while at the same time placing those acts of repentance into the larger purposes of God, not just for my own life but for the whole community.
So this Lenten season I’m anticipating great things. I want to be changed from the inside out. It’s not just a season of cleaning out the clutter in my life, a kind of spring cleaning, that I do year after year with very little change in my attitude and habits. This is a season which sets the tone for the year ahead as I face honestly the “weight and sin that clings so closely” (Rom. 12:1-2) for the purpose of living and loving more fully into the resurrection purposes of God in me and in the world.
What is Lent to you?
What are you doing this season of Lent to walk more fully into the purposes of God?
by Christine Sine.
Faith is the confidence that what we hope for will actually happen; it gives us assurance about things we cannot see. (Hebrews 11:1, NIV)
How and when do we prepare for new life? That is the question ringing in my mind as I begin this journey of Lent. There is much preparation that must be done, some of it already well under way.
seeds sprout in darkness
Not surprisingly, the imagery that first appears in my mind is of a garden, planting seeds, getting ready for the new growth of spring. My first salad greens are already emerging under the grow lights and when I posted a photo a couple of weeks ago, one of my Southern hemisphere friends commented:
Spring is around the corner, as long as you take the right corner.
It is hard for people in the Southern hemisphere to think about resurrection when everything around them is dying. Yet in the garden preparation for the new life of spring has indeed begun there too.
A Time to Scatter Seeds
We tend to think of spring as the time for planting, but in nature, autumn is the real season of planting. This is the time of year when seeds are scattered, covered by the falling leaves and garden debris, preparing to being their journey towards new life.
This is also the season when deciduous trees set buds that contain next year’s leaves and flowers. They then go into dormancy over the winter, at least above ground. In some species the roots continue to grow, strengthening the tree as they search out water. Even what is above the surface is pruned and cut back in preparation for a new spurt of growth.
autumn seed
Spring – the Season of Surprise
Spring is not so much the season of planting, it is the season of surprise. I love to go out into the garden to see what is emerging – sometimes unexpected seeds that must be nurtured into full growth. Sometimes seeds that have been flown in and dropped by birds. I continue to prepare and enrich the soil. Growth begins in darkness, hidden but not passive. Seeds respond to the water, the nutrients, the life around them and even to the light that filters through the darkness.
The preparation of Lent seems to me to be a combination of autumn and spring preparation. The seed has been scattered, we prepare the soil, we hope for seeds to emerge and wait in anticipation for the coming of Christ’s new life.
What comes to mind as you prepare for this journey through Lent? What are the unseen things God has planted in your heart? How does your image reflect the preparation of Jesus for his death—a horrific event necessary to secure our salvation and essential for new life and resurrection?
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by Fran Pratt
God,
We revel in your expansive grace;
We bask in your boundless love;
We delight in the excess of your blessings to us.
As Christ turned water to wine at Cana,
So You are spreading out a bountiful feast for Your people.
We acknowledge that your kingdom is
always expanding
always welcoming
always inviting
always growing
always blessing
always filling.
We acknowledge that in Your presence there is always
a joyful song
a chorus of worship
a fountain of life.
We acknowledge that your attitude toward us is always
joyful celebration
unconditional love
wholehearted acceptance.
The universe is bursting, drunk with Your love.
Our hearts are plump, satisfied with Your love.
Our lives are filled up, ripe with Your blessing.
May we live our lives in the fullness of joy.
Amen
Shrove Tuesday is the day before Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent in the Western Church. “Shrove” means to hear a confession, assign penance, and absolve from sin. Shrove Tuesday is a reminder that we are entering a season of penance.
It is also known as Fat Tuesday or Mardi Gras (which is simply French for Fat Tuesday). In Italy, Fat Tuesday is known as carnevale-goodbye to meat-from which we get our English word carnival. Traditionally people held one last rich feast, using up perishables like eggs, butter and milk before the fast of Lent began. Now in some places, like New Orleans, this has become a huge celebration that really has nothing to do with the beginning of Lent.
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