Ash Wednesday

Click here to read Isaiah 35

Today is Ash Wednesday.  If you want a quick overview of Lent, click over to Busted Halo and watch this two minute video...well worth it.

Lent is a time of renewal and repentance and receiving the hope that is new life found in our connections with each other and to Christ.  

I will be honest, I love Lent.  Unlike Advent, Lent has weathered very well the commercialization of our culture.  Unlike the Christmas tree that has to be just so, no one in the church even knows we own a crown of thorns, much less where it is at or what we would do if it once we dusted off the cobwebs.  On the other hand, as the Bible study class today astutely pointed out to me today, Lent is still "too Catholic".  That makes me sad.  We need a season to clean out our spiritual cobwebs and clutter.  We need a season to be honest.  And let's face it, nothing else is happening in the bleak midwinter of February or March.  We need a place that in the midst of the old piles of melted and re-frozen snow to know that underneath it all a seed is slowly starting to burst forth.  We need a season where hope comes in the form of a crocus and to realize we are on the way.  At its best that is what Lent is.  At its worse it is about guilt and giving things up.

This Lent, in addition to posting on my blog (almost) daily, I am also trying very hard to engage in spiritual disciplines.  I don't say that to sound righteous at all.  Believe, there is a reason I am recommending a site called "Busted Halo".  Yet, I did preach last Sunday on disciplines and I know all too well the charge about not "practicing what we preach" as people of faith.  So, if I have stood in front of people and said it, I ought to follow through to the best of my ability.

For the next forty days I will practice the disciple of the Examen prayer.  I encourage you to try this too.  Not because I think it is the 'best prayer practice ever!'  But I think we do things together, it helps keep us accountable.  If I know you are doing this each day, I sense the trace of God's grace connecting us.  If you know I am doing this each day, then we keep going to support one another.  I pray you will give some thought to Lent in the coming days.  It does not have to be this minute, but hopefully between now and Sunday.

I pray that as signs of spring slowly, emphasis on the word slowly, start to show up, that we will sense God's presence, new life, our connections to each other and creation!  And may it be a blessed and holy 40 days for you.

Grace and peace!