How Beautiful It Is to Proclaim Peace

By Catherine Gordon, submitted by Barb Batt

 

 

How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of the messenger who announces peace, who brings good news, who announces salvation, who says to Zion, “Your God reigns.” — Isaiah 52:7

The shiny trucks of UPS and Amazon could be called beautiful when they bring things that we have longed to get in stores ourselves because of the pandemic. They bring the necessary and the desired. How beautiful are those trucks!

How much more beautiful, though, are the proclamations we bring into the world about Jesus, our Prince of Peace. How much more beautiful is the news we can share of peace on earth that the angels sang at the birth of Jesus. How much more beautiful it is to know that our God reigns and to proclaim it.

And isn’t Lent our time to face the uncomfortable reality that such beauty was consummated in the denial of Jesus, in the mocking and the beating, in the shaming questioning of Jesus by the council, Pilate and Herod, and in Jesus’ crucifixion, death and burial? How can it be that God redeems this darkness? God does though. And because of that we can be at peace. We can proclaim that peace.

Lord God, in this time of Lent, help us in our prayers of confession and penance to find our peace and then to proclaim it to others who are seeking the same. In Christ’s name, we pray. Amen.

Open My Eyes

By Marilyn Travis

I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know Him better. I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which He has called you, the riches of His glorious inheritance in the saints, and His incomparably great power for us who believe. (Ephesians 1:17-19a)

This is a prayer that Paul offered for the Ephesians. It is also a prayer he offered for us, though he might not have known it at that time. In turn, it is a beautiful prayer to offer for our brothers and sisters in Christ. I have this passage underlined in my Bible, and some time in the past I wrote, “I’m claiming this prayer!” I often pray this for myself by putting it in first person. It’s a powerful prayer.

I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give me the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that I may know Him better.

Take a few minutes and reflect on this verse. What am I asking for? In John 3:16, Jesus says to the disciples, “But when He, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all truth.” Imagine! The Holy Spirit, through His guidance and revelation, will lead us into all truth.

I pray also that the eyes of my heart may be enlightened in order that I may know the hope to which He has called me, the riches of His glorious inheritance in the saints, and His incomparably great power for us who believe.

Take a few more minutes to ponder this verse as well. The comment in my study Bible says “the eyes of my heart” refers to your mind, understanding, or inner awareness. Hope has the quality of certainty. It is the assurance of eternal life guaranteed by the present possession of the Holy Spirit. “His glorious inheritance in the saints” refers to either the inheritance we have in God, or God’s inheritance of the saints themselves.

It is a powerful and beautiful passage. As I consider what God has done for me through Jesus during this season of Lent, I pray I will not just read these words, but be transformed by them.

After spending some time in prayer and meditation, ingesting this passage, I invite you to spend some time in praise. Listen, or sing along with Michael W. Smith as he performs “Open the Eyes of My Heart.”

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vnqb7Vn4AEE 

Amen!

 

 

Unite Your Suffering With Christ

By Donna Winchell

Bartolomé Esteban Murillo (1617-1682), “Christ after the Flagellation”

Lent invites us to focus on the suffering and death of Jesus and ultimately, His resurrection. It is a time to remember that we can hand our struggles over to God and allow Him to reshape them as a source of healing. During Lent, we are invited to unite our suffering with Christ’s so it can become redemptive. Redemptive suffering is the most beautiful and perfect love, because while we offer our suffering in unity with Christ, He is with us the whole time. He walks with us in that suffering and never leaves us alone.

Pope St. John Paul II talked about it in this way:

“Those who share in Christ’s sufferings have before their eyes the Paschal Mystery of the Cross and Resurrection, in which Christ descends, in a first phase, to the ultimate limits of human weakness and impotence: indeed, he dies nailed to the Cross. But if at the same time in this weakness there is accomplished his lifting up, confirmed by the power of the Resurrection, then this means that the weaknesses of all human sufferings are capable of being infused with the same power of God manifested in Christ’s Cross.”

Just thinking about this reminded me of the intense suffering and grief I experienced when my husband passed away a couple years ago. Although it was a part of life, it caused such pain, both physically and mentally. When I handed my struggles over to God, I found myself looking inward. God was my source of healing. I saw what I was made of, what I was holding onto and what I wanted the most above all else – my relationship with Him. It was then that I knew I was not alone, my comfort abounded through our Holy Lord, I felt transformed – an emotionally healing process, God never left me alone.

Paul talks about the God of all comfort, the Father of all compassion, Who brings hope and healing to our hearts in and through the ministry of His Spirit among us:

“Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God. For just as we share abundantly in the sufferings of Christ, so also our comfort abounds through Christ.” (2 Corinthians 1:3-5, NIV)

It is inevitable that each of us will experience suffering. We all suffer pain in body and in spirit, these are our trials. If we want to be used by God for His glory, we must be prepared. God entrusts us with trials. Lots of them. This is our share in Christ’s suffering. Yet, it’s precisely during these times of hardship that we can feel weighed down. Our role is to unite our suffering with that of Jesus’ suffering to create an eternal offering of love.

When we are going through a trying time, when life has been touched by any type of suffering – death, chronic illness, loneliness, even despair – Jesus knows.  Whatever pain or hardship we undergo can be offered up to God in union with Christ’s suffering to give it a redemptive quality. The saints tell us not to avoid suffering but to welcome it; to seek suffering with Christ and to allow Him in His steadfast love to comfort and transform us.

“The Redeemer suffered in place of man and for man. Every man has his own share in the Redemption. Each one is also called to share in that suffering through which the Redemption was accomplished. He is called to share in that suffering through which all human suffering has also been redeemed. In bringing about the Redemption through suffering, Christ has also raised human suffering to the level of the Redemption. Thus each man, in his suffering, can also become a sharer in the redemptive suffering of Christ.”                      

                                    – St. John Paul II

Let's Pray.

God, when the road grows dark and life gets difficult, remind us that you too suffered and were persecuted. Remind us that we are not alone, and even now you see us. Help us to remember that you have paved the way for us. You have taken the sin of the world upon yourself, and you are with us in every trial. In Jesus’ Name, Amen.

                                    – Prayer By Alistair Begg

Why is Lent Relevant for Evangelicals?

By Dr. Jim Denison, The Denison Forum, submitted by Brooke Momblow

If you’re like me, you grew up in a church where Lent was a foreign word. Like most things Catholic, it was ignored if not rejected. 

In recent years, I have come to see the error of our ways. 

I am now convinced that Lent holds enormous promise for us. This ancient discipline can be a pathway to healing and hope in our fractured, fearful world.

What is Lent?

“Lent” is derived from the Anglo-Saxon or Teutonic word Lencten, which means “spring.” As strange as it is to our ears, it’s easier than quadragesima, the Latin term for the period (meaning “forty days” or more literally, “the fortieth day”). Greeks called this season tessarakoste (“fortieth”).

As its names imply, Lent is a forty-day observance that occurs each spring. (The forty-day period excludes Sundays, which are to be weekly celebrations of the Resurrection.)

Why is Lent forty days long? 

Because Jesus fasted in the wilderness and was tempted for “forty days and forty nights” (Matthew 4:2). As he used these days to prepare for his public ministry, so we are to use them to prepare for his resurrection and to minister in his name through the rest of the year.

In addition, the Hebrews wandered in the wilderness for forty years of purification before entering their Promised Land. The world was flooded for forty days during the time of Noah, washing away the evil that had infested it. According to tradition, Jesus’ body lay forty hours in the tomb before the Easter miracle. 

All these facts led early Christians to set aside forty days before Easter for spiritual preparation and purification.

Lent begins with Ash Wednesday. It is always the seventh Wednesday before Easter Sunday. Its name comes from the ancient practice of placing ashes on worshippers’ foreheads as a sign of mourning over the death which sin brings into the world. This observance reminds us of the death of Jesus and helps us realize the consequences of sin.

How was Lent practiced historically?

Lenten observance began very early, as both Irenaeus (died A.D. 202) and Tertullian (died A.D. 225) refer to it. It was originally very brief, a forty-hour fast, growing eventually to a week. By A.D. 325, the Council of Nicaea recognized forty days of Lent.

In early centuries, Lent was observed with a strict fast. Only one meal a day was allowed, taken toward evening. Meat, fish, eggs, and milk products were forbidden. Over the centuries, regulations have loosened considerably. 

Today, many people “give up something for Lent” such as chocolate or television. Many abstain from meat on Fridays, Ash Wednesday, and Good Friday. 

Lent is also a time of penance, almsgiving, abstaining from festivities, and devoting more time than usual to religious exercises. In recent years, the Roman Catholic Church has placed more emphasis on these aspects than on physical fasting.

Why is Lent relevant for evangelicals?

Three reasons for observing some form of Lenten practice suggest themselves, in ascending importance.

One: we need to live in community with the larger body of Christ.  

Since the vast majority of Christians practice some form of Lenten observance, joining them in some way is a good step toward solidarity of faith and ministry. This is also an important witness to others, answering Jesus’ prayer, “May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me” (John 17:23).

Two: we cannot fully appreciate Jesus’ resurrection unless we have experienced something of his sufferings.  

A fast of some sort is an appropriate means of spiritual identification with our Lord’s suffering for us.

Three: we need a period each year for intentional spiritual introspection and contemplation.  

John R. W. Stott said that he required an hour a day, a day a week, and a week a year to be alone with his Lord. We need a time every year for spiritual renewal. Just as students need a Spring Break, so do souls. Lent is a wonderful season for such renewal: as the physical world is renewing itself, so should the spiritual.

Can a spiritual discipline practiced for more than seventeen centuries by the vast majority of Christians be irrelevant for us today?

Prayer:

Loving God, Caring parent, 
I am a child who so often turns my back 
on your love. 
Please accept my small acts of sorrow today 
and help to release me from the self-absorption 
that closes my heart to you. 
As I journey through Lent, 
let me remember the feast you have prepared for me 
in the resurrection 
and let me be filled with thanks to you.

            - Creighton University Online Ministries, Lent

Trust in God, Not in Man

By Cathy Ramsey

 

 

Immediately the Spirit drove him into the wilderness. He was in the wilderness forty days, being tempted by Satan. He was with the wild animals, and the angels were serving him. (Mark 1:12-13, CSB)

Does it feel like we are in the wilderness with wild animals and other frightening things? Our wilderness is in COVID19, cancer, domestic terrorists, political division, dangerous weather, and wildfires. For parents, schooling for children during COVID is a wilderness. Satan is here, too, tempting us to lose faith in God, tempting us to not love everyone as we love ourselves, tempting us to turn away from Him.

However, in our faith, in our hearts and souls, we know God is with us. Our faith suggests that we can have hope amidst all the bad news, child abuse, war, hunger, terrorism, crimes against innocent people, and all the other darkness in the world. During this Lenten season, we can follow Jesus’s lead in trusting in our Lord in the wilderness. God cared for Jesus in his wilderness and God will care for us in our wilderness. Maybe we should turn off all the news and focus on God’s faithfulness and trust he will rescue us during these 40 days of Lent. When we are tempted to sin, if we do as Jesus does in the wilderness, we will pray and pray and turn our faces to God.

We will be so much happier and more peaceful if we listen to God instead of the politicians. If we spend more time shining God’s light in the darkness and less time listening to all of the political rhetoric and dark news, we will find joy, peace, and strength.

Remember “If you want to get to Carnegie Hall, practice, practice, practice”? If we want to live our lives in the Kingdom of God, perhaps we can practice, practice, practice praying to God and trusting Him during Lent and carrying it over after Lent.

Trust in the Lord with all your heart and do not rely on your own understanding: in all your ways know him, and he will make your paths straight. (Proverbs 3:5-6, CSB)

Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death, so that we would not trust in ourselves but in God who raises the dead. He has delivered us from such a terrible death, and he will deliver us. We have put our hope in him that he will deliver us again. (2 Corinthians 1: 9-10, CSB)

Corrie Ten Boom: “Never be afraid to trust an unknown future to a known God.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson: “All I have seen teaches me to trust the Creator for all I have not seen.”

From http://thepatienceoftrees.blogspot.com/

To Grow a Trust in God (What Lent is For)

A French writer once wrote, “In the end, life offers only one tragedy: not to have been a saint.” When Lent points us to the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, when Lent points us to baptism, it calls us to the life of a saint, to the life that trusts in God. The Transfiguration of Jesus is a picture of what it means to be a saint because it is a picture of staying present when, like Peter, we don’t know what’s coming next and so we truly are following, even open to getting things wrong and correction. But most of all, it’s a picture of trust and God’s glory; a picture of what Lent is for. The Transfiguration reminds us why we make the trip.

Lent is about trust and God’s glory. Lent is for growing our trust in God’s love as the most important thing about us. Putting down the other things we were tempted to trust instead, especially those fears or misplaced trusts that come at the expense of our visible love for our sisters and brothers.

Lent is about trust and God’s glory. This is why Lent is about preparing for baptism and remembering your baptism. Baptism into the death and resurrection of Jesus.

Lent is a good time to remember what we are here for, and to once again center our lives on our purpose of living a life centered in Christ.

What About Him? The One who died, was crucified to save us from sin.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JgXIbj4qUcA&feature=youtu.be

A Different Perspective on Lent

By Bob Hostetler, submitted by Barb Batt

One of the features of my childhood was a cardboard box on our kitchen table during the Lenten season, to collect all of the loose change in the household. On Good Friday, we took it to church and donated it to a “self-denial” fund that benefited missions. Others in my school and neighborhood fasted or abstained from red meat on Fridays during Lent or gave up sweets or television.

Those are fairly common practices, as they help followers of Jesus to observe a season of reflection and repentance for the 40 days leading up to Good Friday and Easter. But this year? Sure, reflection and repentance are always a good idea, but many of us have sacrificed more than usual since last Easter. We’ve laid aside plans, trips, family gatherings and more.

So maybe this year, we can observe Lent in a different—but still meaningful and helpful—way. Maybe this year, instead of giving up something for Lent, we can flip the focus of our prayers and spiritual practices and appreciate what we might gain during this season. Such as what? you ask. Here are four possibilities:

1)  Steep Yourself in Quiet

Do you feel as though you’re surrounded by turmoil and assaulted with bad news? Lent can be a season of turning off the tumult and finding ways to meditate on and experience the shepherd’s Psalm: 

The Lord is my shepherd, I lack nothing.
He makes me lie down in green pastures,
He leads me beside quiet waters,
He refreshes my soul (Psalm 23:1-2, NIV)

So turn off the newscast. Skip listening to the radio in the car. Maybe sit in a park or city church at midday and listen…to the quiet.

2)  Look for a Fresh Perspective

Remember Elijah after his showdown with the prophets of Baal (1 Kings 18)? He was exhausted. He felt isolated, alone, the last sane voice in the entire nation. But he wasn’t. God spoke and informed Elijah that there were still thousands of faithful souls who could be counted alongside him (see 1 Kings 19:18). This man of God gained a new outlook. 

A change in routine—even an unwelcome disruption—can provide a fresh perspective, if we talk it through with God. He will often (as He did Elijah) restore us and point us in a new direction, if we’re listening. So don’t just spend these days leading up to Easter waiting and wailing. Keep asking, seeking and knocking (see Matthew 7:7). As you pray, look for God to give you a fresh point of view.

3)  Pursue Some Peace

The prophet Isaiah prayed, “You will keep in perfect peace all who trust in You, all whose thoughts are fixed on You!” (Isaiah 26:3, NLT). What would happen if you made that your daily prayer during Lent? If you fixed your thoughts on God, could you let go of a longstanding grudge? With His help, could you forgive a long-ago hurt? Could you trust Him enough and make that long-overdue phone call? 

When Jesus wept over Jerusalem, He said, “If you had only known today what would bring you peace!” (Luke 19:42, GWT). Do you know what will bring you peace? Why not make the choices that would bring you inner calm this Lenten season?

4)  Don’t Give Up on Healing

Could Lent be a time of healing for you? Would it be a physical healing? A financial breakthrough? A fractured relationship mended? 

Sure, it may be a sacrifice to give up salt or red meat during Lent, but wouldn’t that improve your cholesterol? You may find it hard to pray for a neighbor who irritates you, but what if it lowered your blood pressure? You might have given up praying for an outcome, but then you’d surely miss the one prayer that might lead to healing.

When Jesus asked the man at the Pool of Bethesda, “Do you want to get well?” the man replied, “I have no one to help me into the pool when the water is stirred. While I am trying to get in, someone else goes down ahead of me" (John 5:7, NIV). He felt friendless and frustrated. And that had been going on for years. But on this particular day, Jesus met him and said, “Get up! Pick up your mat and walk” (John 5:8, NIV). And the man picked up his mat and walked. 

Have you stopped praying and hoping? Why not take prayerful healing steps this Lenten season to change that?

Maybe this year, however else you might observe Lent, try shifting your focus and looking for what you might gain.

May Today There Be Peace

Submitted by Marilyn Travis

I came across this blog entry from St. Benedict’s Monastery, St. Joseph, Minnesota, September 23, 2010. I found it particularly timely and the two poems referred to here especially meaningful in this time of Lent. I invite you to take some time with this. As poet Minnie Louise Haskins suggests, “put your hand in the hand of God” and go forth!

May Today There Be Peace Within

 “Don’t be anxious,” Jesus tells us in the Gospel (Mk 6:34). But frankly, I’ve been wondering how we are supposed to do that in this terrifying world in which we live. I sometimes wake up in the 3 a.m. “hour of the dragon” and am faced with some of the challenges facing people of every nation and the very health of fragile earth.

I could list all those things that seem to be going wrong around us, and so could you. I could tell stories of people I know and love, stories from my Sisters and our guests in the monastery that underscore the risky world we live in. So could you from your own experience. You and I know we sometimes sit around and spin the risk until we are looking at a catastrophe. So what are we to do?

In 1908 the poet Minnie Louise Haskins published the poem “The Gate of Year,” part of a collection titled The Desert. Her poem was widely acclaimed as inspirational, reaching its first mass audience in the early days of the Second World War. Those of us who lived some portion of those years, or who have since studied that time in history, know that it, too, was a risky time threatening mass destruction of the world. Haskins wrote in part: “And I said to the man who stood at the gate of the year: ‘Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown.’ And he replied: ‘Go out into the darkness and put your hand into the Hand of God. That shall be to you better than light and safer than a known way.’ So I went forth, and finding the Hand of God, trod gladly into the night.“

What was there in that poem that caught the imagination of people of all nations? For those of us who believe in a God who desires only our good, it seems an affirmation that we can trust God. In our times of anxiety, it seems a better light and safer way than anything else.

St. Therese of Lisieux born 85 years before Minnie wrote her poem, offers us comparable words of trust in the midst of this age of anxiety:

May today there be peace within.

May you trust God that you are exactly where you are meant to be.

May you not forget the infinite possibilities that are born of faith.

May you use those gifts that you have received, and pass on the love that has been given to you.

May you be content knowing you are a child of God.

Let this presence settle into your bones, and allow your soul the freedom to sing, dance, praise and love.