Thought Exercise on Lent

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Lent: Preparing for a Banquet

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Keywords

Not long ago, just as the season of Lent had got underway, a friend complained to me, “I know it’s Lent, but where’s the joy?” It is easy to understand why Lent is often misunderstood as a period of s...

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The Roots of Ash Wednesday

Author

Beth Bevis

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Scripture

Joel 2:12-13, Romans 3:20-26, Job 42:5-6, Ezekiel 9:4, Genesis 2:7, Ecclesiastes 3:20

Since the seventh century, the Western church has observed the start of Lent on Ash Wednesday—the fortieth day before Easter, not counting Sundays. In addition to providing ample time for self-examina...

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A Social Media Fast

Author

Marlena Graves

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Scripture

Isaiah 30:15

So in the last three years, in order to reorient myself and head back onto the narrow way, I’ve given up social media and/or the internet for Lent. At first it’s agonizing. I’m like a caffeine or nico...

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Repentance for the Religious

Author

John W. Rilling

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Scripture

Romans 3:25, Hebrews 9:28, Matthew 4:1-2, 1 Peter 2:24, Psalm 51:1-2, 2 Corinthians 5:21

Written almost a hundred years ago, this excerpt from the Reverend John W. Rilling points out one of the main reasons we continue to observe Lent, a period of repentance and discipline for many who ca...

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The Origin of the Imposition of Ashes

Author

Beth Bevis

Keywords

Scripture

Joel 2:12-13, Romans 3:20-26, Job 42:5-6, Ezekiel 9:4, Genesis 2:7, Ecclesiastes 3:20

The imposition of ashes, now a familiar Ash Wednesday tradition in Catholic, Anglican, and many Protestant churches, has its roots in an early church penitential practice. For people who had been excl...

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Fasting as a Flashpoint Issue for the Reformation

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On a chilly morning in March 1522, in the city of Zurich, the printer Christoph Froschauer sat down with his workers and shared a plate of sausages, in open deﬁance of the Roman Catholic Church, which...

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We Are Dust

Author

Luke A. Powery

Keywords

Scripture

Genesis 3:19, Psalm 103:14, Job 42:5-6, Joel 2:12-13, Hebrews 12:1-3, Romans 3:20-26, Ecclesiastes 3:20

At the beginning of this season of Lent, on this Ash Wednesday, we are reminded that we are dust and to dust we will return. We are reminded of human fragility and failure. We are reminded that we are...

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Two Moments That Matter

Author

Richard Rohr

Keywords

Lent

There are two moments that matter. One is when you know that your one and only life is absolutely valuable and alive. The other is when you know your life, as presently lived, is entirely pointless an...

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Spirituals and Suffering

Author

Luke A. Powery

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There is no lack of pain and suffering in the world. Look around. Read the newspaper. Click on the Internet. Scroll Facebook or read a tweet. Suffering is always present like the paparazzi. It seems t...

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Identifying Christians

Author

Kerry Weber

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On the whole, though, Catholics (and Protestants) aren’t identifiable at first glance. Yet, on Ash Wednesday I’m always surprised by the number of people I see on the streets and in the subways sporti...

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A Trench in the Ground

Author

Wendell Berry

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At start of spring I open a trench in the ground. I put into it the winter’s accumulation of paper, pages I do not want to read. Again, useless words, fragments, errors. And I put into it the contents...

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Opening Our Windows Towards Jerusalem

Author

John H. Baumgaertner

Keywords

Lent

In this short excerpt from a series of sermons for the Lenten season, pastor and author John H. Baumgaertner shares this short poem about the Lenten journey: Opening our windows toward Jerusalem And...

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A Lutheran Stomach

Author

Desiderius Erasmus

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Desiderius Erasmus was a Dutch humanist scholar and Catholic priest. His works were so significant he was given the nickname “Prince of the Humanists'' and “the crowning glory of the Christian...

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Recovering a Vision and the Taste of the New Life

Author

Alexander Schmemann

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“…the liturgical traditions of the Church, all its cycles and services, exist, first of all, in order to help us recover the vision and the taste of that new life which we so easily lose and betray, s...

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Ash Wednesday & A Public Faith

Author

Stuart R. Strachan, Jr.

Keywords

Scripture

Joel 2:12-13, Romans 3:20-26, Job 42:5-6, Ezekiel 9:4, Genesis 2:7, Ecclesiastes 3:20

I don’t know about you, but I’ve always enjoyed the public nature of Ash Wednesday. That is to say, what happens when we leave an Ash Wednesday service and there is the sign of the cross, for all who ...

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Repentance Makes Way for God’s Grace

Author

Billy Graham

Keywords

Scripture

Matthew 4:17

Repentance is a very unpopular word. But the first sermon Jesus ever preached was “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand” (Matthew 4:17). This was God speaking through His Son. Jesus had come w...

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The Silent Daily Anxiety

Author

Annemarie S. Kidder

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In his devotional guide on preparing for the rite of confession in the Evangelical Lutheran Church, the nineteenth-century Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard says that true repentance from the persp...

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John the Baptist & the Path of Repentance

Author

Günther Bornkamm,

Keywords

Far from merely assigning to [John] a temporal and now accomplished task…[the church] recognized him to be the one who will be forever preparing the way for Christ and who, so to speak, stands guard a...

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Repentance: A Mental Revolution

Author

Lesslie Newbigin

Keywords

Scripture

Isaiah 55:6-9 , Jonah 3:1-10, 2 Chronicles 7:14, Mark 1:14-15, Romans 12:2, Psalm 51:10-12

Lesslie Newbigin, the great missiologist and missionary, shares a powerful analogy of repentance from his days serving as a missionary in India. I remember once visiting a village in the Madras di...

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One Step At a Time: Advice from the Desert Fathers

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Sayings of the Desert Fathers and Mothers

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The following story comes from the collection of sayings of the Desert Fathers and Mothers in Egypt, teaching that would have first been transmitted orally (around 350-450 A.D.) and later written down...

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A Short History of Repentance and Confession

Author

Annemarie S. Kidder

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The history of repentance is as old as humankind. We each carry the remembrance of wrongdoing in burdensome satchels, hoping that eventually someone will ease them off our back. We each know the feeli...

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Your Cell Will Teach You Everything

Author

Thomas Merton

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Scripture

Psalm 46:10, 1 Kings 19:9-18, Matthew 5:5-15, Daniel 3:19-27, Exodus 13:21-22, Mark 1:35-39, Luke 5:16, Matthew 4:1-11, Mark 1:12-13, Genesis 32:24-30, Psalm 62:1, Hosea 2:14, Habakkuk 2:1, 1 Samuel 3:1-10, Isaiah 26:3

A certain brother went to Abbot Moses in Scete, and asked him for a good word. And the Elder said to him: Go, sit in your cell and your cell will teach you everything. An elder said: The monk’s ce...

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Don’t Look Down But Up

Author

Rowan Williams

Keywords

Scripture

Hebrews 10:24-25, Philippians 2:3-4, Ephesians 4:2, Romans 12:10, 1 Peter 5:5

In his excellent book on the desert fathers, Where God Happens , former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams tells of an encounter between two monastic fathers. The first was Macarius, famous in...

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Just a stain in the soil

Author

William Rowley

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Scripture

Genesis 3:19, Ecclesiastes 3:20, Genesis 18:27, James 4:14, Psalm 90:12, Psalm 39:4, 1 Peter 2:24-25, Psalm 90:10, Psalm 78:39, 1 Chronicles 29:15, Psalm 39:5, Psalm 144:4, Job 14:1, Psalm 103:15-16, Job 7:6-7, Genesis 2:7

I love a British TV show called Time Team. Hosted by Tony Robinson, a team of archeologists descend on a site in Britain and excavate for three days. Inevitably, the archeologists unearth the dead...

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A Deep Breath and a Turn

Author

Eugene H. Peterson

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There is an interesting history of the word repentance. The word in Hebrew means originally “to take a deep breath and sigh.” A deep feeling of sorrow, of remorse. Repentance at the root, at the very ...

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The Great Temptation

Author

Alan Fadling

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Scripture

Isaiah 26:3, Mark 6:31, Habakkuk 2:3, Psalm 27:14, Genesis 8:22

In his excellent book, An Unhurried Life, Alan Fadling describes one of our greatest temptations in the modern age—hurry: Hurry is a great temptation. Hurry looks like impulsive, knee-jerk reactions...

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Give Me Chastity…Someday

Author

Stuart R. Strachan, Jr.

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Augustine of Hippo's (63AD-114) Confessions is widely considered to be one of the most important books ever written, some consider it the world’s first biography. Augustine's early life was ch...

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The Definition of Repentance

Author

Frank Viola

Keywords

Scripture

2 Corinthians 5:17

If you could reduce the gospel to one word, most scholars would choose metanoia—the Greek word translated “repentance” in the New Testament… Most of the time we translate both “meta-noeo” and “meta-no...

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Hard, Hard Things

Author

Dorothy Day

Keywords

Lent

We suffer these things and they fade from memory. But daily, hourly, to give up our own possessions and especially to subordinate our own impulses and wishes to others—these are hard, hard things; and...

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The Tragedy of Missed Opportunities

Author

The Pastor's Workshop

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Scripture

Jeremiah 8:20, Matthew 23:37-38; 25:10, Luke 9:61-6, 2 Corinthians 6:2 , Acts 24:24–27, Hebrews 3:7–13

History records the Battle of Cannae as perhaps Rome's most devastating military defeat, orchestrated by the tactical genius of Hannibal of Carthage. In the aftermath of this crushing victory, the...

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