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Dear Friends in Christ,
Ready or not, the season of Lent is upon us. People approach the season in different ways. Some embrace it while others endure it. Some love it while others love to hate it. Depending on your background, Lent may be a regular and familiar part of your spiritual rhythm. Or it may be an entirely new experience that feels alien and uncomfortable.
However you feel, I encourage you to embrace Lent. If you aren’t sure how, talk with Beth, Jeff or me. I promise we will enjoy having this conversation with you.
Lent is often experienced through spiritual disciplines. For example, some people set aside specific time in their day or week for intentional focus on God’s presence in their lives. This might include prayer, meditation, reading, journaling or a walk in a peaceful place. Even a few minutes each day can make a difference.
Some people choose the discipline of fasting which is the practice of giving up something meaningful as a means of renewing one’s spirit. Most people associate fasting with food, but it doesn’t need to be. You might fast from social media or limit your screen time or commit to stop working at a certain time each day so you can participate in something that feeds your soul.
We need look no further than Jesus to find our example for making this forty-day commitment. As Br. Curtis Almquist, SSJE said in sermon he preached a few years ago:
The forty days of Lent remind us of Jesus’ forty days in the wilderness. For Jesus, those forty days were not a time when he would confront the misaligned political and economic powers that surrounded him, about which he was well apprised. Rather, those forty days were a time to re-align himself to why God had given him life: to claim the right purpose, the right power, the right voice God had given him. There he was in the desert to be purged of anything in the world that tempted him to stray from his reason for being.
Br. Curtis does not mean to imply we should ignore the “misaligned political and economic powers” that still infect our society. Instead, he is encouraging us to create space for the renewal of our spirits so we will have sufficient strength “to strive for justice and peace among all people, and to respect the dignity of every human being,” as we promise in our Baptismal Covenant.
“Lent,” Br. Curtis continued, “will give us forty days for the purgation of our own souls, where we may have colluded with the very powers we condemn. The focus of Lent can create space anew for the light, and life, and love of Jesus to teem in us and through us to our desperately broken world.”
Your Friend in Christ,
The Rev. John Denson, D.Min.
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