Lent 2011:  “Some things must die, some things must live”

While many of us like the idea of spontaneity, with its surprise and playfulness, we also recognize that the things in life that really are significant usually require careful preparation.  Like a career choice, a marriage, retirement, a holiday, even a special meal – these things require fore-thought, planning, and an intentional decision to get ready and then follow-through to make it happen.

The season of Lent is about that kind of preparation.

Lent is the 40 days (excepting Sundays) leading up to Easter, and in the Christian calendar it has long been a time set aside for deeper spiritual engagement.  It is normally patterned after the rhythms of confession and repentance, with strong elements of sacrifice, as a way of walking with Jesus through the cross and then to the empty tomb.

I’ve mapped out a journey through Lent and would like to invite you to come along.  It is a deliberate contrast between the way of life described by Jesus in the Beatitudes, and seven sins that Christian history has identified as particularly sinister to our souls (and which are largely now celebrated in our broader culture).  It is well described in one of the resources we’ll be using:

“The Beatitudes are eight snapshots of eight different lives that Jesus said experience God’s favor.  The Beatitudes introduced all that Jesus wanted to say about a new kind of life.  Through them Jesus sought to pull at his audience’s heartstrings.  He wanted to draw them in and show them that the life God offers is precisely what they desired.  The Beatitudes were, above all else, Jesus’ invitation to see the world as God does – and to love it.  As a whole, the Beatitudes are a picture of the voids created by sin being filled in with the life of heaven.  They are eight pictures of resurrection.”  (from the introduction, emphasis original:  Jeff Cook, Seven: The Deadly Sins And The Beatitudes.  ePub Format.  © 2008.  Zondervan.)

The Map for the Journey:

We will look at one of these pairings each week in the sermon time, dialogue about it in adult education, encourage personal reading and reflection through some resources provided, and facilitate some points of deep connection and accountability in existing relationships.  In brief, the map looks like this:

Preparation:

-          download the book by Jeff Cook, Seven: The Deadly Sins And The Beatitudes.: (available in the free Kobo eReader, http://www.kobobooks.com, here is a direct link: http://www.kobobooks.com/ebook/Seven-The-Deadly-Sins-And/book-mvwlpdY66EWQw8LGHSmrVg/page1.html

-          read the introduction

-          attend the Ash Wednesday service with us (7pm, St. Paul’s Anglican church)

-          ask a trusted friend or two to walk the journey with you (commit to connecting once a week for conversation and prayer together)

-          make a commitment to be in church and adult education weekly through Lent, or if unable to then commit to catching up with the material as posted on the church website

(March 13)  Week 1: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, and the humble”

(March 20)   Week 2: “Blessed are those who mourn”

(March 27)   Week 3: “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst”

(April 3)        Week 4: “Blessed are the merciful”

(April 10)      Week 5: “Blessed are the pure in heart”

(April 17)      Week 6 (Palm Sunday): “Blessed are the persecuted”

(April 22)      Good Friday:  “Blessed are the meek”

(April 24)      Resurrection Sunday:  The Way of Life

(May 1)         Testimony Sunday:  the Sunday after “Resurrection Sunday” I’d like a few people (3 or

                        4?) who might share a bit of their story of how God has been transforming them

                        through this Lenten journey.