I never understood Lent. I never got it. I always thought Lent was some superstitious season where you give up chocolate so God will bless you. Not now. Not ever again.
The Whole World Has Changed
Everything has changed. What used to work doesn't work anymore, maybe it never did. Covid has disrupted everything for the whole world.
We’re all in a low grade of depression at the least. We’re all suffering and grieving what was lost.
What's your story?
Mine is, I lost my wife to cancer. I have friends who refused to be vaccinated, seeing it as a lack of faith, some have died, and it breaks my heart. I have stage 4 lung cancer. I'm going through deep grief. But I'm not alone.
God is faithful, even when we are faithless. And love? Love never fails. Tho the nations rage, As God is love, Love will prevail.
Remember, When Jesus was in the tomb, the world thought it was all over. But love had other ideas, love turned 'over' upside down.
These Are Unprecedented Times
We’re all living in a time of deep social and spiritual upheaval. We’re off autopilot, all of us, reassessing everything. It looks like we as a people, and as a nation, no, the whole world is in a season of Lent, on the threshold of transformation, and we don't know it.
We Are On The Precipice of A New Humanity
As all are born of the first Adam,
So In Christ, we are reborn of the last Adam, Jesus.
We are a new creation, born of heaven.
We are sons and daughters of the Father of Lights
Jesus died to save us from ourselves
Death could not hold him.
And in Christ, death cannot hold us.
All creation waits for us to be revealed
This is the reason for Lent,
So That, like Jesus, we might die to ourselves
so that we might live in Christ and Christ in us.
This is our hope and surety and it is upon us.
It's time to wake up and to learn what we need to learn.
How to be an anchor in the storm.
How to be a sanctuary of peace in the middle of the chaos.
Let us be and become who we really are, sons and daughters of light.
What Would Jesus Do?
In your relationships with one another, have the same mind as Christ Jesus: Though he was God, he didn’t think of equality with God as something to grasp, rather, he emptied himself, taking the very nature of a servant, being born a human being. And being found in the form of a man, he humbled himself, becoming obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. ~ Philippians 2:5
Here are some thoughts, ideas, and observations I hope they’ll stir your heart,
and I hope you’ll find them useful.
Deconstructing Into Wholeness
· Lent is the season for cleaning out the springs of our hearts.
· Lent is the season for spiritual, emotional, mental, and physical detox.
· Lent is the season to reboot.
· Lent is a trust fall into the arms of God.
· Lent may just be the divine interrupt you’ve been waiting for your whole life.
· Lent is deconstructing into wholeness.
· Lent is the church season dedicated to falling apart and letting go,
that we might fall into the hands of God.
· Lent is when we lay our mindless busyness down, to recover those things which should never have been forgotten.
· Lent is when we die to the spirit of this world's systems, so that we might rather sync with the Spirit of love, and bear heaven on earth.
· Lent is the season of interior descent, examination, and reflection.
* It takes intentional time and focus to deconstruct our religious, social, and national idols so that the Lord is our God.
* It takes intentional time and Focus to deconstruct our false religious programing, so we worship the Holy One and not our systems.
· Lent is the season where we enter into our dark night, that might be laid bare to God’s grace, mercy, and light.
· Lent is the season we die to our hopes, our dreams, and agendas, to empty ourselves out that we might be filled with new life, to see with new eyes, to live wholeheartedly, filled with Spirit, living an abundant life.
As we journey together, We don't have all the answers, in fact, Lent isn’t about answers, or certainty, or programs, or what we believe. Lent is more about holding the questions. Lent is about unknowing, and walking into the mystery. It’s about deconstruction, falling apart, and being broken open that we might receive, even more, and more of Christ, that Christ might break forth on our left and our right, above us and below us, before and behind us. That Christ might fill all of time and eternity, and that with Christ in us, we might enter in.
Now may the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, be with us and abide in us, forever.
* Notes: Lent is a season of forty days, not counting Sundays, which begins on Ash Wednesday and ends on Holy Saturday. Lent comes from the Anglo-Saxon word lencten, which means “spring.” The forty days represent the time Jesus spent in the wilderness, enduring temptation and preparing to begin his ministry.
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