LENT!
It's finally here! I could hardly sleep the other night awaiting the dawn of... oh wait, that was Christmas.
While it has been said that I'm not quite right - you know who you are - I really do love this season of the church year, Lent/Easter. It's better than Advent/Christmas.
By the time we're done putzing around the tree I feel as though I need to wash!
Lent, though, is all about the need to wash. It has an emphasis on Law. Not, as many think, on the "requirement" to give something up, or fast - though if you find them useful disciplines to aid your reflections on the need for washing - good!
Lent is a reflective time. We live in a culture that has no time to reflect -- it is always pushing forward, all about the now or the about to be.
Lent is a time to slow down and look in the mirror of God's Law. It's a time to realign our thinking. Beauty and sweetness and goodness - only skin deep (and like the buildings in a spaghetti western - just a front), we're rotten to the core!
Lent is not a time to be depressed. We reflect, we don't forget. The gift we're preparing to celebrate is worth the wait and the inward preparation. The time spent and the hymns in a minor key prepare us to find more joy in the celebration to come (double entendre intended).
It's finally here! I could hardly sleep the other night awaiting the dawn of... oh wait, that was Christmas.
While it has been said that I'm not quite right - you know who you are - I really do love this season of the church year, Lent/Easter. It's better than Advent/Christmas.
By the time we're done putzing around the tree I feel as though I need to wash!
Lent, though, is all about the need to wash. It has an emphasis on Law. Not, as many think, on the "requirement" to give something up, or fast - though if you find them useful disciplines to aid your reflections on the need for washing - good!
Lent is a reflective time. We live in a culture that has no time to reflect -- it is always pushing forward, all about the now or the about to be.
Lent is a time to slow down and look in the mirror of God's Law. It's a time to realign our thinking. Beauty and sweetness and goodness - only skin deep (and like the buildings in a spaghetti western - just a front), we're rotten to the core!
Lent is not a time to be depressed. We reflect, we don't forget. The gift we're preparing to celebrate is worth the wait and the inward preparation. The time spent and the hymns in a minor key prepare us to find more joy in the celebration to come (double entendre intended).
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