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The First Word

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“Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”

Luke 23:34

 

1. “Father…”

How often do we respond to God with resentment when we don’t get our way? Even in the midst of a gruesome public death, Jesus continues to call God “Father.” Filled with anguish, Jesus petitioned God to remove the cup of death and suffering looming before him (Lk. 22:42-44). Yet God’s response was not the one Jesus desired. Still, Jesus does not let this stand in the way of his relationship with the one he calls “Father.” Even in the worst of situations, he affirms the goodness of our God.

2. “…forgive them…”

When beset by our own suffering and pain, how often is our first thought for the people around us? It seems appropriate that Luke’s account renders Jesus’s first words on the cross as a petition for the forgiveness of others. After all, what is the cross if not a symbol of God’s working for us? Still, it is striking that we find in such an agonizing image God’s word to us that we are forgiven.

3. “…for they know not what they do.”

Who is the “they” that Jesus prays for in his petition? Likely, “they” are the Roman soldiers who drove nails through his body and the Roman authorities who condoned it. “They” probably also includes the Jewish leaders who demanded his execution and the Jews in the crowd cheering for his death. An act at the height of injustice, the image of God on the cross is somehow accompanied with words that long for the forgiveness of those who perpetrated it. Apparently, forgiveness can come even to those who put God on a cross.

It is telling that we find Jesus’s petition for their forgiveness at the symbolic moment of man’s rejection of God. Clearly, these words together with the image of the crucifix demonstrate God’s willingness to be for us. Jesus does not define those who execute him by their actions; instead, he sees them as those whom God loves, finding space for God’s forgiveness to move.

Here, we remember Jesus’s famous words: “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you” (Lk. 5:27-28). Just as startling a contrast as Jesus’s cry for the forgiveness of those who unjustly execute him, loving our enemies is the way we proclaim God’s kingdom. It is the way God accomplishes justice and moves through the sin we find rampant in humanity. Can we see our enemies as the very ones for whom Jesus cries out for forgiveness? In The End of Memory, Miroslav Volf writes, “The memory of the Passion urges — indeed, obligates — me to place the memory of suffered wrong in the service of reconciliation” (125). When we allow the image of Christ on the cross to define our actions, we find the grace of God in our own wounds. May we be strengthened by the words of Jesus to welcome the love of God into the lives of those he has forgiven.

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Violence in Scripture

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“‘If in spite of this you still do not listen to me but continue to be hostile toward me, 28 then in my anger I will be hostile toward you, and I myself will punish you for your sins seven times over. 29 You will eat the flesh of your sons and the flesh of your daughters.” (Leviticus 26:27-29)

For those of us that consider all Scripture to be God-breathed (which, really, all Christians should), passages like the one above serve as a huge headache and heartache. Headache because now we have to look up all the scriptural and historical context, find what our favorite Christian writers and thinkers have said about them, and finally try our best to think of a way to comfortably fit it in with the rest of our worldview. Heartache because, really? Would you really say something like this, God? Would you really threatenyour people with cannibalizing their own children?

There are many difficult passages in the bible. For example, I can think of nothing harder than Jesus’ command to love my enemies, to turn the other cheek, and to pray for those who persecute me. My feeling is that, “I’m having a hard enough time as it is with the gospels and the epistles, why throw the Old Testament in there as well?” Personally, I feel like I’d rather keep some of the Old Testament depictions of a violent God out of sight and out of mind, because realistically they do nothing to help me be a more faithful follower of Christ, here and now.

But for one reason or another we are forced to contend with the bloodthirsty, vengeful God of old. Sometimes it’s the in-your-face atheism of people like Christopher Hitchens or Richard Dawkins, whose words we see in media or from our acquaintances that have read their work. In The God Delusion, Dawkins famously says that “The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction” calling him, among other things, vindictive, homophobic, genocidal, and a bully. Such attacks on the God we worship puts us on the defensive, and so we feel the need to defend God from those that seek to slander his name.

Other times the hard-hitting questions come from a more well-meaning place. Maybe this scenario is familiar to you: a newer Christian approaches someone she considers an experienced Christian and asks why God is okay with destroying entire peoples in the Old Testament. If God is love, why does he seem so unloving in those parts of the Bible? Whether you’re the newer or the experienced Christian in that situation, the impulse is to reach for some kind of favorable “spin”, or a way to justify according to our standards what it was that God said and did whenever he engaged in violence.

So far I’ve introduced three ways Christians respond to the problem of God’s violence in the Old Testament: push it out of sight and out of mind, defend God from those outside the faith, and put the best possible “spin” on it. But if you’re like me you are still unsatisfied. In the coming weeks I’ll be working through some alternatives that Christians have found, different ways of trying to make sense of these violent portraits of God. And, despite the headaches and the heartaches, hopefully come to a fuller understanding of the coherent story of God in Scripture.

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The Elephant and the Rider

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A few weeks back at Christ Kaleidoscope we talked about the critical role self-control plays in Christian discipleship. Because of our affluence, there is very little to limit our desires. We can pretty much get or do what we want, when we want. This kind of “freedom” is a blessing for sure, but it can also be(come) a curse. What often happens is that over time we become slaves to our wants and appetites, which, when given no compelling vision of the good, grow wanton and unwieldy. We see this bondage most poignantly when we want to effect some kind of change in our lives. We try to change, but we find we can’t. In the famous words of St. Paul, “I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do,” (Romans 7:20).

An apt analogy for this is that of an animal with a person sitting on its back. It dates back to Plato and has recently been popularized as the elephant and the rider. Compared to the strength of a 6 ton animal, the rider is small and weak. But the rider is smart and is able to point the elephant in the desired direction by pulling hard on the reigns she holds in her hands. But the rider will soon grow tired and when she does, the elephant will roam where it wants.

There are a variety of ways to understand this analogy. The elephant represents our wants and desires and passions. When there is no direction given, the elephant wanders and can stray in some troublesome directions. Willpower, on the other hand, is represented by the strength of the rider. While we may be able to exert some degree of self-control for a period of time, over the long haul, exhuasation sets in and the elephant ends up, once again, going its own way.

In terms of Christian discipleship, the elephant might be understood as our “old self” with all its ingrained and deep-seated practices. Pulling the reigns on these lingering habits often feels like trying to tame a 6 ton beast. Nonetheless we are told in Scripture to put off these practices, to take off the old self and put on the new.

What might this look like?

Well, if we use the analogy of the elephant and the rider we might put together a two-pronged strategy: (1) keep the rider rested and strong and (2) train the elephant.

(1) We might think of self-control as a muscle. If you exercise it for too long the less effective it becomes. And so like a muscle, we need to make time to rest. Here, sleep becomes a spiritual discipline. We all know we tend to get more cranky and unruly when we have gotten enough sleep. Well it seems there’s a reason for it. Sleep replenishes us to do the hard work of taming our elephants, so to speak. (We might also mention, diet and exercise here as critical elements to keeping our bodies energized for the task of Christian discipleship – things we don’t normally label as “spiritual.”)

(2) We can also train the elephant. That is, train our desires so that they become more in line with the good God envisions for us. The primary practice here would be worship. To put ourselves in a place with other believers where we are confronted with the beauty of the one who invites us to become “holy as I am holy.” Through prayer, through lifting up our voices in song, through hearing the reading and proclamation of Scripture, through confession and onto the central practice of gathering around the table, receiving the body and blood of our Lord, to being sent out into the world with God’s blessing, these become ways in which we align our wants and desires and passions to the wants and desires and passions of God.

A secondary practice would be to spend some time in a passage like Ephesians 4:17-32 or Colossians 3:1-17 and focus on one thing that needs to be put to death in our lives: anger, gossip, lying, lust, filthy language, etc. There’s a lot to choose from in these passages). But we single out one and instead of expending our energy on figuring out how to grasp the next rung on the corporate ladder or how we can experience the next cool thing, we channel our attention and initiative on how we might rid ourselves of that one thing we need to put to death.

The hope is as we put all these things together we can cooperate with the work of the Spirit in us so that we find ourselves bearing the fruit of Christ’s character in us: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and (of course) self-control.

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Karl Barth on the Fish and the Second Naïveté

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A few months back our daughter Carissa heard the song “I Wanna Go Back” on the Fish and got hooked. She kept asking to hear it. And pretty soon Janet and I got hooked too. If you don’t know the song here’s the music video:

It’s one of those songs that gets stuck in your head, the kind you find yourself singing under your breath throughout the day. That’s what happend to me. I kept singing the chorus over and over: “I wanna go back to Jesus loves me this I know, for the Bible tells me so…”

So catchy.

Aside from its infectious melody, the song reminds me of a story about the Swiss theologian Karl Barth. He was visiting the states as a guest lecturer at Princeton Theological Seminary and the University of Chicago.

KBA_9030_032-2

During his trip, a student asked him if he could boil down his life’s work as a pastor and theologian into one sentence. According to church lore, he looked at the student from behind his thick black rimmed glasses and said, “Yes, I can. In the words of a song I learned at my mother’s knee: ‘Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.”

The story is often told to remind us not to miss the forest for the theological trees. There is an enormous depth to the Christian faith, and we can sometimes get lost in its limitless intracacies and complexities. But all our inquiries ought to lead us back to the simple truth at the core of our faith, which begins, “God so loved the world…”

But for many, we find that we cannot simply “go back.” Either because of things we have experienced or the questions that incessantly gnaw on us, we are pushed to a place where what used to work for us no longer does. To “go back” would be akin to what Jesus says about sewing a patch of unshrunk cloth on an old garment. The new will pull away from the old, making the tear worse.

When what we grew up with no longer fits, it is important to hear in our questions and doubts a necessary voice pointing the way forward (if we will let it). We are not trying to go back so to speak, but as C.S. Lewis puts it, “to go further up and further in.” Biblically we might say, we are not trying to get back to Eden, but onward to the New Jerusalem.

Most Christians I look up to have gone through some kind of crisis of faith. And this crisis is often a scary thing because we find ourselves deconstructing all that we once believed good and true. But the critical distance that is created here is often bridged by what philosopher Paul Ricoeur coined, “the second naivete.”

In the second naivete we are able to engage faith in a different way than we did in the “first naivete.” We don’t simply accept everything at face value or on a surface level. In critically reflecting on our beliefs we are brought to a place of informed engagement. We are able to reengage our beliefs. And we find that there is now an imaginative depth added to what we once believed. The story we used to hear in a pre-critical way is now charged with a more dynamic and vivid range of meaning.

For those of us who find ourselves in a place of doubt and uncertainty, may those doubts and uncertainties be the place of struggle and growth that brings about a second naivete. And in so doing, may we find that what can be wholeheartedly sung by an eight year old girl is also deep enough to encapsulate a lifetime of theological investigation…

Jesus loves me this I know for the Bible tells me so.

Amen.

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Holy Week: Glory

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John 17

Reading John 17, I was left thinking about the words glory and glorify. These words are used quite a few times at the beginning of this chapter – 5 times in 6 verses. They are “churchy” words that we’ve all heard before. We kinda know what they mean and we kinda don’t. John’s Gospel is filled with these kinds of abstract words and concepts. Eternal life is another one , which pops up in these verses as well.

I did a little digging and found a pair of words that are closely related to glory and glorify: magnificence and magnify. Magnify is a word that is a little more concrete for us to get our heads around. When we magnify something what we are doing is enlarging it so that we can get a better picture of what that something is up close – its particular characteristics, its dinstinctive qualities, its unique essence. In short, magnifying  helps us to see something more clearly.

A similar dynamic is at work when we glorify something. To glorify is to enlarge something so as to see its splendor and beauty all the more clearly. Take as an example an athlete. Let’s say, Roger Federer. For the Fed to be glorified is for everyone to see and recognize the greatness of his talent and elegance as a tennis player. His talent and elegance are already and always there; they just need to be drawn out or shown-off so that they can be recognized and known by others. That’s what it means to glorify.

So, this is what Jesus says he came to do – to glorify the Father. In Jesus the beauty and character of God is enlarged. It is magnified. And it is important to point out that Jesus says these words as part of his farewell prayer. After praying this prayer, Jesus begins his harrowing journey to the cross. Before he sets off on that road, Jesus asks of the Father, “Glorify your Son so that the Son may glorify you” (John 17:1). With the shadow of the cross hanging over these words, Jesus is saying, “Father, as I am lifted up on that cross, beaten and broken, would your beauty and power be enlarged for all the world to see.”

We as believers are the answer to that prayer, for on the the cross we say that we see the character of God displayed in all its brilliance and glory and magnificence. 
And this ends up being what eternal life is all about. As Jesus says in verse 3, “This is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.”

As we head towards Good Friday, may we get our microscopes out and focus in on the cross. May the glory of God be magnified for us as we gaze on the man who hangs on it. And in so doing may we find ourselves entering ever more deeply into the life that is eternal.

Amen.

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Holy Week

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As we enter into Holy Week, here is a reading schedule that follows John’s narrative of Jesus’ last days:

Monday (4/10): John 17 (the whole chapter)

This chapter can be read as a last will and testament of sorts. It expresses Jesus’ final wishes in the form of a prayer. He prays for those he will soon leave behind and not only for them, but also for those who will one day believe because of their witness. In other words, Jesus lifts us up in prayer as well.

In pondering this passage it may be helpful to do some deep work on the things that Jesus hopes for his disciples (which includes us). In doing so, may what Jesus wants for us reorder our disordered wants and loves.

Tuesday (4/11): John 18:1-27

These verses are filled with betrayal. There is Judas, of course, who (in)famously betrays Jesus with a kiss (Matthew 26.48, Mark 14:44, Luke 22:47). Then there is Peter, who denies Jesus not once, not twice, but thrice. Both fail to remain true to Jesus, but they do so for different reasons under different circumstances. In spending time in this passage, we might consider how we are vulnerable to the same pressures that pushed Judas and Peter to turn their backs on the one they both called Lord.

Wednesday (4/12): John 18:28-19:16a

As we continue on in John 18, we find Jesus being interrogated by Pilate. If Peter’s denial of Jesus shows us a certain kind of cowardice, we are confronted with another kind in Pilate. It is a kind that is able to hide behind power and security so as to put off making a decision on the truth Jesus testifies to. Is it possible that there is a little Pilate in us, refusing to accept or putting off the truth that confronts us in Jesus?

The other character that finds a prominent place in the narrative is the mob who cries, “Crucify him! Crucify him!” (John 19:6). Pilate’s failure stems from a fear of upsetting popular opinion. Those who demand crucifixion seem to be enraged by the audacity of this poor carpenter from Nazareth who would dare upend and uproot their expectations of what a Savior should be and do. At least they understood that’s what Jesus was up to. The question we might put to ourselves is, “Are we as perceptive as they?”

Thursday (4/13): John 19:16b-42

Here we come to the crucifixion. Jesus is lifted up on a Roman cross between two criminals. John also tells us that some soldiers took his clothes and divided it among themselves. So there hangs the King of the Jews, bloodied and beaten and naked for all to see. And there at the foot of his cross there is a new family forming, of those who come to mourn the death of the crucified King. In reading this portion of Scripture, may we count ourselves among those gathered there and may we spend some time reflecting on just what is meant when Jesus breathed his last and said, “It is finished.”

Good Friday Service (4/14): The Seven Last Words of Christ

Our hope is that our journey through John 18-19 will prepare us well for Good Friday. If you’re in the area Christ Kaleidoscope will be holding a service from 7PM to 9PM at Rancho Senior Center (3 Ethel Coplen Way, Irvine, CA 92612). We will be designing prayer stations based on the 7 last words from Christ.

May we blessed by the reading of God’s Word this Holy Week.

Grace and Peace.

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Lent: Human

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Luke 15:11-32 (MSG)

Then he said, “There was once a man who had two sons. The younger said to his father, ‘Father, I want right now what’s coming to me.’

“So the father divided the property between them. It wasn’t long before the younger son packed his bags and left for a distant country. There, undisciplined and dissipated, he wasted everything he had. After he had gone through all his money, there was a bad famine all through that country and he began to hurt. He signed on with a citizen there who assigned him to his fields to slop the pigs. He was so hungry he would have eaten the corncobs in the pig slop, but no one would give him any.

“That brought him to his senses. He said, ‘All those farmhands working for my father sit down to three meals a day, and here I am starving to death. I’m going back to my father. I’ll say to him, Father, I’ve sinned against God, I’ve sinned before you; I don’t deserve to be called your son. Take me on as a hired hand.’ He got right up and went home to his father.

“When he was still a long way off, his father saw him. His heart pounding, he ran out, embraced him, and kissed him. The son started his speech: ‘Father, I’ve sinned against God, I’ve sinned before you; I don’t deserve to be called your son ever again.’

“But the father wasn’t listening. He was calling to the servants, ‘Quick. Bring a clean set of clothes and dress him. Put the family ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. Then get a grain-fed heifer and roast it. We’re going to feast! We’re going to have a wonderful time! My son is here—given up for dead and now alive! Given up for lost and now found!’ And they began to have a wonderful time.

“All this time his older son was out in the field. When the day’s work was done he came in. As he approached the house, he heard the music and dancing. Calling over one of the houseboys, he asked what was going on. He told him, ‘Your brother came home. Your father has ordered a feast—barbecued beef!—because he has him home safe and sound.’

“The older brother stalked off in an angry sulk and refused to join in. His father came out and tried to talk to him, but he wouldn’t listen. The son said, ‘Look how many years I’ve stayed here serving you, never giving you one moment of grief, but have you ever thrown a party for me and my friends? Then this son of yours who has thrown away your money on whores shows up and you go all out with a feast!’

“His father said, ‘Son, you don’t understand. You’re with me all the time, and everything that is mine is yours—but this is a wonderful time, and we had to celebrate. This brother of yours was dead, and he’s alive! He was lost, and he’s found!’”

Human – Jon Bellion

I always fear that I’m not living right
So I feel guilty when I go to church
The pastor tells me I’ve been saved, I’m fine
Then please explain to me why my chest still hurts

I spent four thousand on the Mart McFlys
Yet I’m still petrified of going broke
There’s someone gorgeous in my bed tonight
Yet I’m still petrified that I’ll die alone

I’m just so sick of being
I’m just so sick of being
human
I’m just so sick of being
I’m just so sick of being
Oh na…

My mother calls I have no time to talk
But I can find the time to drink and smoke
Took 15 hits ’till I can barely walk
I threw up on the lawn, I can’t find my phone

I got no nuts to tell the one I love
That she’s the reason that I wrote this song
And that’s some coward shit I know it sucks
But Lauren call me when you hear this song

I’m just so sick of being
human
I’m just so sick of being

human
I’m just so sick of being
I’m just so sick of being
Oh na…

See I got GPS on my phone
And I can follow it to get home
If my location’s never unknown
Then tell me why I still feel lost
Tell me why I still feel

Tell me why I still feel
Tell me why I still feel
Human

 

Merciful Father,

you have created us in your image

and called us, your creatures,

to live out your love, hope, and desires in your world.

Absolve your people from their offences, 

that through your bountiful goodness

we may be delivered from the chains of those sins. 

Give us peace from our fears and frailty

and give us hope in our struggle with being human.

Remind us that we are more than the sum of our failures and fleshly desires.

 

 

 

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Three to Read (Mar. 8, 2017)

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This week’s Three to Read contains some explicit language. But it is explicit language used to help us discern what is going on in the wider world, as well as uncover what so often goes unnoticed in our own.

The word is bullshit.

It’s probably a word we say under our breath whenever we hear Trump open his mouth. And so the first article is entitled, The Bullshit of the Trump Administration. It asks the question, “What do we mean when we say someone is “bullshitting”? In answering that question we are better able to see how bullshit differs from and is more dangerous than simply lying.

The second article wants us to know that There’s One Thing Pope Francis Wants Christians to Give Up for Lent. It’s easy to point out all the nonsense coming out of the White House, but Lent is a time where we turn the finger back on ourselves, when we stop staring at the bird turd in our neighbor’s life and start cleaning up the steaming pile of bullshit in ours. (NOTE: The harrowing passage about Lazarus that Pope Francis references is Luke 16:19-31.)

The last reading is just some practical advice on How to Break a Bad Habit That’s Holding You Back. For many of us, our problem is that we just do the same crap over and over and over. As the saying goes, bad habits are so easy to make and so hard to break. This article will give us a good starting place to do the latter.

As we continue in this Lenten season let us keep in mind what the first article concludes: “The bullshitter is the greatest enemy of the truth.” If Jesus is the Truth, as we Christians claim him to be, let us not be his greatest enemy when it comes to our witness of him in the world.

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Lent: Mess of Me

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Romans 7:15-20 (NIV)

I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. For I know that good itself does not dwell in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.

Mess Of Me – Switchfoot

I am my own affliction
I am my own disease
There ain’t no drug that they could sell
Ah there ain’t no drugs to make me well

There ain’t no drug
It’s not enough
There ain’t no drug
The sickness is myself

I made a mess of me I wanna get back the rest of me
I’ve made a mess of me I wanna spend the rest of my life alive
I’ve made a mess of me I wanna get back the rest of me
I’ve made a mess of me I wanna spend the rest of my life alive
The rest of my life alive!

We lock our souls in cages
We hide inside our shells
It’s hard to free the ones you love
Oh when you can’t forgive yourself
Yeah forgive yourself!

There ain’t no drug
There ain’t no drug
There ain’t no drug
The sickness is myself

I made a mess of me I wanna get back the rest of me
I’ve made a mess of me I wanna spend the rest of my life alive
I’ve made a mess of me I wanna reverse this tragedy
I’ve made a mess of me I wanna spend the rest of my life alive
The rest of my life alive!

Ah! Right

There ain’t no drug
There ain’t no drug
There ain’t no drug
No drug to make me well
There ain’t no drug
It’s not enough
I’m breaking up
The sickness is myself
The sickness is myself

I made a mess of me I wanna get back the rest of me
I’ve made a mess of me I wanna spend the rest of my life alive
I’ve made a mess of me I wanna reverse this tragedy
I’ve made a mess of me I wanna spend the rest of my life alive
The rest of my life alive!!

 

God of compassion,

you hate nothing that you have made,

 forgive the sins of all those who are regretful and ashamed,

and embrace your people who struggle to return to you with open arms.

Create and make in us new and contrite hearts

that we, worthily lamenting our sins

and acknowledge our wretchedness,

may receive from you perfect remission and forgiveness;

through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

 

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Lenten Devotional

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Joel 2:12-13 (ESV)

“Yet even now,” declares the Lord,
“return to me with all your heart,
with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning;
and rend your hearts and not your garments.”
Return to the Lord your God,
for he is gracious and merciful,
slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love;
and he relents over disaster.

Lent is a forty-day season of reflection and preparation for the death of Jesus. It is a time of repentance and meditation, of considering Christ’s suffering and rethinking how we are called to take up our own crosses. Some of us give up things like chocolate or television during this season as a sort of fasting. As a result, we are left to rethink how we live and how we want to live.

Then is Lent a New Year’s resolution for Christians? Not necessarily. Yes, we sacrifice and give up certain pleasures and bad habits, not because of self-improvement or righteous piety, but to reorient our lives towards the cross.

Additionally, Lent is not simply about mirroring Jesus’ fasting in the desert for forty-days and the temptations he had by Satan. Lent is a season where we hear, respond, and arrange our lives to Jesus’ call and the cross. It is a season of giving over our life to death. The German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer said it best, “When Christ calls a man, He bids him to come and die”.

As we embark on this journey towards Good Friday and the cross, we begin (once more) to surrender ourselves to Christ in union with his death. However, the cross is not the end to our otherwise happy life, but what Bonhoeffer would say “meets us at the beginning of our communion with Christ”.

We are to confront our own guilt, shame, fears, anger, sadness, and sinfulness during Lent, and though we will experience the joy and happiness of Easter and resurrection, we first must walk the long trek to meet Jesus on the cross and encounter the pain and sorrow of Good Friday.

Let us be reminded that we do not have to fear our own shortcomings:

“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. He guides me along the right paths for his name’s sake. Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me.”  Psalm 23:1-4 (NIV)

  • Is Lent another New Year’s resolution for you? If yes, why? If no, then how would describe or articulate the importance of Lent?
  • What have you given up for Lent? Why?
  • What have you learned about your faith, yourself, and suffering during Lent?
  • In what ways are you listening to God in this Lenten season?
  • What will help you to remain faithful to your Lenten practice? What will pose a challenge to your Lenten practice?