Easter Season

People think it is strange to like Lent.  It is after all a penitential season, and who likes penitence?  Feeling penitent sounds bad enough, but actually enjoying the Lenten season seems to verge on Masochism.   I should be joyful that Lent is over, Easter has come and I can once again say Hallelujah!

But I’m actually a little sad.  Once Easter comes, we seem to go back to business as usual.  I liked having the emphasis of our faith placed on our personal spiritual journey.  Lent gave us the chance to look at our lives with a critical eye and to find the obstructions that keep us from God and then work to remove them.

Wait a minute – why do we only do that during the Lenten season?  Why don’t we concentrate on our personal growth in becoming more like Christ all year long?   

I want to challenge you to join me in making a special effort to continue to search for this newness of life and forgiveness.  Following close upon Lent’s penitence is hope – hope that the barriers between us and God will disappear and be gone for good. Pray with me that with God’s help, we will keep clear a space for God and experience greater joy on a daily basis. 

Here are some suggestions for clearing sacred space in your life:

v daily prayer/meditation time

v media fasts

v meditative walks

v creative activities – music and art

v journaling

v volunteering in Christ’s name

May you emerge each day transformed and closer to God.

Repentance

Repentance. What is it? It's an excellent question, and a subject about which there is considerable misunderstanding. Some believe repentance is feeling sorry for what they've done wrong. And that is a fine thing, but it's not the same as repentance.

A 180-DEGREE TURN
A Hebrew word translated repent in the Old Testament is shuwb, meaning to turn. Changing our mind in repentance involves a turning.  Moses told the Israelites, "When you turn [shuwb] to the Lord your God and obey His voice...He will not forsake you nor destroy you" (Deut. 4:30-31). The same word is used three times in Ezekiel 14:6, "Thus says the Lord God: ‘Repent [shuwb], turn away [shuwb] from your idols, and turn away [shuwb] your faces from all your abominations.'" It is for this kind of turning that Paul commends the Thessalonian believers: "You turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God" (I Thess. 1:9).

A CHANGE OF MIND AFFECTING OUR LIVES
"Repentance," in the New Testament, is translated from the Greek word metanoeo, and means a change of mind. This does not simply a superficial change of some opinion we have–such as, "I've decided I prefer chocolate ice cream to vanilla ice cream." Repentance is a genuine change of attitudes and values that affects our lives in a significant way. Paul said he preached to the Gentiles, "that they should repent, turn to God, and do works befitting repentance" (Acts 26:20). It was expected that their repentance would fundamentally change the way they lived.

A RESTORED RELATIONSHIP WITH GOD
Biblical repentance always involves our relationships with the Lord. It involves seeing our sins as offenses against a holy God. In repentance, we change our minds about selves, our sins, and God. When we sin, we are actually rejecting God's rule over our lives and placing ourselves on the throne. We imply–whether or not we actually say it–that God is wrong, and we are right about how we should act. In repentance we change our minds about that false view of ourselves and our sins, and admit that God is right. That change of mind affects how we behave.

How have your attitudes, priorities and lifestyle changed during this Lenten season?

“Life is pain."  This is the first sentence of Scott Peck's book The Road Less Traveled.  He point's this out in his book to help us see that the sooner we accept that life is pain, the better off we will be.  Many of us have had setbacks in our lives.  We may have suffered divorce, bankruptcy, death of a loved one, illness, substance abuse, or just plain disappointment.  It’s important to realize that each of us is an individual, but our experiences are not unique.  Others have suffered our same struggles.  We all have had obstacles that we have overcome.  Some pain takes a long time to heal, but we can get better with time, perseverance, and a positive attitude and spirit.  When offered a second chance in life, we need to make the most of it.  

Second chances are not guaranteed in this world.  But Paul wrote in Romans 8 “For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”  Because of Christ, our God is a God of second chances. 

When given a second chance in life, living to the best of our abilities shows our gratitude for what we have been given.  It will take prayer, patience, focus, and support to ensure we make the most of it.  Above all else, knowing that God is on our side, and doing something about it will make the difference.  Life is about God’s continual call on our lives, and our willingness to stop running and allow God to enter into our hearts and create in us a clean heart.  This is an offer God makes to all of us!  Thank God we serve a God of SECOND CHANCES!

Have you heard God calling lately?

Claustrophobia is one of the most common phobias in America. Claustrophobia is characterized by panic that is a result of being in enclosed spaces.  It can develop from either a traumatic childhood experience (such as being trapped in a small space during a childhood game), or from another unpleasant experience later on in life involving confined spaces (such as being stuck in an elevator).  When an individual experiences such an event, it can often trigger a panic attack.  This response then becomes programmed in the brain, establishing an association between being in a tight space and feeling anxious or out-of-control.  As a result, the person often develops claustrophobia.

Jonah is certainly a great candidate for developing claustrophobia.  Jonah’s prayer to God from the belly of the great fish comes from his distress and anxiety over being in this confined space.  Yet Jonah is thankful to God for being saved by the fish.  Jonah had done nothing to deserve being rescued; his salvation was by grace alone.

The Lord deals with us not according to strict justice, but rather in ways that are consistently full of grace.  We have a tendency to turn away from God until there is a crisis.  Then out of panic or anxiety, we turn to God for help. 

When you are in a desperate situation, do you have a tendency to pray with hope or is prayer a pessimistic last resort?

Lent

All of us have times when we think our own personal situation is so blighted with an imperfection or a mistake we might have made, that we can never repair it.  This is the point of a wonderful story by a famous Polish-Jewish teacher called the Dubna Maggid, or the preacher from the town of Dubna.  Here is the story:

A king had a large beautiful jewel, a ruby that was especially precious to him because it was a gift from his deceased queen mother.  Through some careless accident, the jewel was ruined by a deep scratch and the king was in despair.  He called many experts to repair it. Some tried polishing. Some tried chemical solutions. Nothing worked.

A proclamation went out that if anyone could remove that scratch, the king would be indebted to him for a lifetime. Many tried and failed.  One day a craftsman of humble demeanor came to the king saying that he would like to try to repair the ruby, and the king, who had nearly given up hope, turned it over to him.  Some weeks later, the craftsman returned. No, the scratch had not been removed but the king was delighted because the craftsman, through his artistry, had turned the jewel into something far more precious than before.  At the end of the scratch, he had engraved a beautiful rose. The scratch had become the stem of the rose through that craftsman’s skill.  A curse turned into a blessing beyond price.

Each of us is given a precious jewel by God, more precious than any earthly jewel.  There can be a scratch in any one of our lives, an imperfection that we sometimes think can never be repaired.  But through the artistry in our own souls, the image of God within us, we can turn those imperfections into works of art that make our lives priceless blessings, not only for ourselves but for many others.  I think this is what God meant when he blessed Abraham with the words, "Be thou a blessing."  We can be sure that we will be a blessing with God’s help.

Some of life’s storms come upon us suddenly as was the case for the disciples in the ship. (Mark 4:37) We suddenly lose someone we love; we have a bitter disappointment, a crushing financial situation, or a physical illness that threatens to change our life forever or even threatens to end it.

Other storms come more slowly.  You see the sky darken around you and the visibility of your life dims until it seems a black cloud has surrounded you.   It is during the storms of life that our God equips us for service. The history of mankind has always been rough and rugged.  No one that wishes to be of value in this world will escape the storms that shape and mold us.

Randy Travis sang the “storms of life are washing me away.”  God wants each of us to be washed away by the storms so He can mold us into His creation.  As life rages around us, let’s remember that God is there to guide us through the peril and bring us to the other side.

The next time you start to experience the tempest, thank God for his abiding presence and embrace the new you!

So What Is Lent?

People ask me this all the time.  I wanted to share with you some of the details about this season in order to help you understand it and to give you the knowledge to sound smart if someone asks you that question.

Many Christians throughout the world observe Lent. Catholics, Orthodox, and many Protestants look forward to this annual time of sacrifice and simplicity. For non-Christians, Lent can be a bit of a mystery. To some, Lent is a period of going on a diet; to others, it is when Catholic co-workers show up to work with ashes on their heads, and fast food restaurants start selling fish sandwiches.

Lent is meant to be a season of fasting, self-denial, Christian growth, penitence, conversion, and simplicity. Lent, which comes from the Teutonic (Germanic) word for springtime, can be viewed as a spiritual spring cleaning: a time for taking spiritual inventory and then cleaning out those things which hinder our corporate and personal relationships with Jesus Christ and our service to him.  Thus, it is fitting that the season of Lent begins with a symbol of repentance: having ashes mixed with oil placed on one's head or forehead. It is important to remember that our Lenten disciplines are supposed to ultimately transform our entire person: body, soul, and spirit.  There are a few basic rituals that have traditionally been associated with Lent.  Many of these (fasting, almsgiving, and prayer) have a long history.  In addition, reading the Scriptures and the Church's Writings can help foster growth during Lent.

Let’s take a closer look at the beginning of Lent.  Shrove Tuesday is the day before Ash Wednesday. It comes from the word "shriving" meaning confession and absolution. Traditionally, this was a day when Christians would confess their sins in preparation for Lent. It is a custom to eat pancakes on Shrove Tuesday. This probably originated because of the ingredients in pancakes: oil, eggs, and butter, which were forbidden during Lent. Making and eating pancakes was an easy and convenient way to get them out of the house before Lent began. Shrove Tuesday is also called "Fat Tuesday," which is what Mardi Gras means. It is called this because many took it to be the last time to party before Easter. However, the Church has traditionally tried to discourage the carnal and material celebrations of Shrove Tuesday.  In the Western Church, Ash Wednesday marks the first day of Lent. On Ash Wednesday, a mixture of ashes and consecrated oil is imposed on the heads or foreheads of the faithful in the sign of the cross. The symbolism is rooted in the Old Testament (and sometimes early Church) practice of wearing sackcloth and ashes to symbolize penitence. It also symbolizes our being ashes and dust, our mortality.

In the course of a year, the Church celebrates the unfolding of the mystery of Christ, beginning with Advent, the anticipation of his first coming, and reaching a high point at Easter, the feast of feasts, the celebration of Christ's resurrection. Throughout the Church Year, which includes the seasonal, daily, and yearly cycles of Christian time, we commemorate and participate in events in the lives of Jesus and his followers, through sanctified time. Thus, we experience in symbol what Jesus and his followers experienced in reality.  Join me in making this season of Lent a meaningful spiritual journey!