Skip to main content

First Friday in Lent

Lent can remind us of our mortality and sober our thinking and attitudes that we allow slack during other parts of the year. But the realization of our mortality need not be morose or defeatist in its affect on us. Indeed, if noticing our own mortality helps us to stop and refocus on God, we can instead rejoice, grasp, and look forward to the Life immortal that He has given us and promised forever.

Acknowledging our mortality prepares us to let go of impermanence, of deterioration, of illness and even of death. We can let go of death as a threat, as something to be feared and avoided at all costs. Rather, we can accept it knowing that it is but a beginning.

A beginning to Life, real Life that will have no end. A Life with and in God in an even more perfect manner than we can experience in our current bodies.This anticipated transition, of becoming and not ending, has formed the basis of faith for more than one disciple in the history of the church. It has consistently brought forth praise and even a bit of frustration or disappointment. Paul we know was torn between going to be with God, or remaining on earth. For him to have lived would be Christ; for him to have died would gain.

Gain that cannot be realized if we hold on to mortality and avoid falling into Life with God. This Life is the promise, but it comes with death as the door. Don't rue your mortality; anticipate with gladness the resurrection. As someone has said, "it's Friday, but Sunday's coming!"

This Lent, practice letting go of some stuff, of some plans, of some ego need. This Lent, reach out for Life.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

He Remembers We Are But Flesh

In Job, often considered the first book written in the Bible, we are introduced to the accuser. In the introduction to the book, it is the accuser who accuses Job of being righteous and faithful to God only because of the blessings that God has given Job. We find the accuser again in Zechariah 3. The High Priest Joshua is standing in front of the Lord in filthy clothes, and the accuser is making accusations. The Lord rebukes the accuser and then says that he will cleanse Joshua.  Then in the New Testament, we see the appearance of the Advocate. The Spirit, we are told, is sent to walk beside us, to be a witness, to be an advocate for us. The accuser challenges us, questions our faithfulness, and questions our integrity as people who are supposed to follow God as His people, His disciples. This is an entre for being blamed and shamed. But God comes alongside us and advocates for us. We are told too that Jesus is our mediator with God. Jesus defends us and explains us to God so that ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Elders redux

A reader (I am always amazed that people actually read this blog) submitted a rather long comment on the original post on Elders. It is apparent that the reader did some good homework as the comment has several, well, more than several, reference citations. It is clear that they both read the original post and did some Bible study before posting their comment. Because the comment was so long, I thought it appropriate to post another entry rather than bury the response in the comment log. In the following discussion, I have included the text of the comment without the Scripture references. If you want to read the comment in its entirety, scroll to the Elders post and click on the comment. --------------------------------------------------------- [Comment~~~~The church is expected to be a people in exactly this sense. We are the people of God who are charged with continuing and preserving the values, culture, hopes, and the identity of God’s people in our time.~~~~ Does this include th...
7 comments
Read more

Remember You Were Slaves

In his essay "Mishpatim: Healing the Heart of Darkness*," Jonathan Sacks makes the argument that tribalism can, and usually does, give rise to acceptance, compassion, and social bonding but also to fear, hate, and demeaning others. Those in our group give and receive the former from us, those outside our group receive and often give the latter. We humans have the capacity of empathy toward those like us but we also, being finite beings, suffer from fear and that fear too often translates to hate of those not like us.  Sacks then reminds us that Israel was told not to hate the outsider, the one who isn't in our group. He quotes two passages from Exodus: "You must not mistreat or oppress the stranger in any way. Remember, you yourselves were once strangers in the land of Egypt." (22.21) "You must not oppress strangers. You know what it feels like to be a stranger, for you yourselves were once strangers in the land of Egypt." (23.9) Sacks then...
Post a Comment
Read more