faith

**Edited to add:  This podcast on Lent with Pastors Todd Wilken and Heath Curtis is one of the best I’ve heard.  Blessed Lent to you.

Thank you for those who came to the live chat last night! It was fast and fun and maybe we’ll do it again some time. You can view the transcript here.

Lent begins this week on Ash Wednesday and lasts 40 days with it’s culmination in Easter.   This is a repost from last February {and the February before that!) and will explain Lent in further detail for the newcomer to the season.  My thanks to Pastor Will Weedon for allowing me to republish part of his post.

“Lent begins with this realization. That we are a people in exile. That we are wandering far from our true home.

And thus the beginning of  repentance isn’t merely the terror that one finds in wandering in a strange land; the beginning of repentance is homesickness.

Lent teaches us to fess up to how often  we settle down in the land of our exile as though it were our true home; attempting to still the yearning the Spirit has created by throwing at it physical or    psychological pleasure, and how it never works.”

courtesy of Pastor Will Weedon

Lent is a 40 day period leading up to Easter that is characterized by prayer, reflection, repentance and often fasting, then culminating in the celebration of the resurrection and the feasting of Easter. It roughly mimics the 40 days Christ retreated to the wilderness and wrestled with the devil. Many evangelicals reject ‘lenten’ observance because it’s just too Roman catholic and because there is no mandate for it in scripture. As a former evangelical, I can say that I’ve spent 30 years enjoying the ‘feasting’ of Easter without the penitential and preparatory time of Lent  and I wish I could go back and change that. I find that one of many benefits of following the traditional church calendar and being in a liturgical church is that nothing gets overlooked.

It’s a methodical way of proceeding through the scriptures and it prevents such things as quickly glossing over the celebration of Christ’s resurrection without spending time in quiet reflection of His death on the cross, the mental anguish and suffering which took place while He was in the wilderness, and the details of the events of His life during Holy Week. It’s like walking in ‘real time’ with Him during the last weeks of His life. Is Lent discussed or commanded , per se, in the scriptures? No, but penitence and fasting and prayer are  and what better time to observe a more rigorous christian discipline than as we reflect upon the last days and weeks of the life of Christ.

And we all practice degrees of discipline already. Lent is the spiritual equivalent of physical exercise for the body. The body gets stronger when we demand much from it—not when we always ‘give in’ to what it wants. The same is true in disciplining our children. Because we love them so much, we demand what is best for them, which is often not what they, in their immaturity want for themselves.  In C.S. Lewis’ The Problem of Pain, he puts it this way:

“It is for people whom we care nothing about that we demand happiness on any terms; with our friends, our lovers, our children, we are exacting and would rather see them suffer much than be happy in contemptible and estranging circumstances. God has paid us the intolerable compliment of loving us, in the deepest, most tragic, most inexorable sense………The Church is the Lord’s bride whom He so loves that in her no spot or blemish is endurable.”

Though the analogy breaks down when taken to extremes, God compares our relationship to Him to that between a parent/child. And Lewis, in his book, compares our being brought into God’s family to a very ‘badly brought up boy’ being introduced into a decent family. When they see traits in this child that are detestable, Lewis says ‘they not only hate it, but they ought to hate it. They cannot love him for what he is, they can only try to turn him into what he is not’.

…we are at present, creatures whose character must be, in some respects, a horror to God, and as it is, when we really see it, a horror to ourselves.”

God our Father, despite our unloveliness, has given us everything we need and has clothed us with the righteousness of Christ, but we, like Adam, want to ‘clothe’ ourselves. Lent is a time to strip down; to take off the filthy clothes of our own righteousness and to let our Father give us from His hand what He knows we need.

It’s like the picture of Stevie teaching Emme to fish. We learn from our Father by spending time with Him. There is much He wants to teach us and much that needs to be changed in us. But more than all that, He wants to give us Himself—-knowing that we were created for relationship with Him. And  nothing will satisfy the deepest longings of our soul save Our Father’s perfect love.   Lent is time to retreat with Our Father. To confess to Him that we have wandered so far from home and that we have become far too ‘comfortable’ in the pleasures of this life. To confess to Him how utterly dependent we have become on everything, but Him. And He will gladly ‘receive’ us back with open arms:  not because we demonstrate to Him our growing discipline and holiness,  but for the sake of Christ and Him alone.

A few stray thoughts:

1. Lent is a time for penitence and reflection and the practicing of christian discipline. It does not make God ‘more pleased with me’ and is not a ‘good work’. God is pleased with Christ alone and good works are those things which I do in service to my neighbor.
2. If I purpose to ‘give something up’ for Lent and then two weeks later find that I fail and can’t keep my lenten discipline, God is not disappointed in me. God is pleased with Christ and thus pleased with me when I have faith in Christ. I am a sinner who fails and sins constantly. And my failing is not a surprise to God.
3. If I keep my lenten discipline to the ‘tee’, I must be careful not to try and convince myself that I’m ‘more spiritual’ or holy than before. I have been freely clothed with the righteousness of Christ and am only learning to ‘fit’ into clothes that were given me by God.
4. We must also be careful not to view our discipline as ‘suffering’ and remember that Christ suffered on the cross for our redemption and we do not get to choose our own suffering (by giving up, say diet pepsi for a month).
5. It is a good exercise to occasionally deprive our bodies, to not give in to every fleshly desire. We are so often slaves to our own bodies and teaching ourselves discipline in any area is often met with resistance.

I leave you with another quote from Pastor Will Weedon who kept me from seeing Lent as a season where ‘I work hard to become more holy’;

The holiness into which you seek to grow has already been given to you, whole and entire! It’s yours in Jesus Christ, the gift of His righteousness  fully bequeathed you in Baptism, and constantly renewed in you by absolution and the Holy Eucharist. Through these wonderful gifts, we get to GROW  in the apprehension of that which is already our own, learning to live more and more from it, more and more from union with Christ and less and less  from the old self. So it is not that holiness grows in you; it is that you grow in holiness! Getting used to whom God has made you to be in His Son.   There’s real effort here, of course, but the effort is working at resting in Him who works all things through us. I don’t overcome sin by my willpower (ha!),  but by the strength of Him who has united Himself to me.

I have been unbelievably blessed since I started blogging and using various other modes of social networking.  I’ve made wonderful friends.  I’ve been  inspired in countless ways.  And I owe you a debt of gratitude for how you’ve encouraged me and shown God’s love and grace to me.    But the internet can quickly suck you into a black hole where you’re left wondering where the last 2 hours went.  During Lent, I’ll be going ‘unplugged’ (no blogging, twitter or facebook) for parts of the season to rest, refocus, reenergize.  I’ve said it before, the internet makes a great servant but a poor master.  I’ll try to finish answering your questions from this post in the next few days and then will sign off for a while after Wednesday.   I will  be praying for you.  I wish you a blessed Lent.

You might find these  podcast links helpful.  The Gospel-Driven Church, Dr. Micheal Horton , Ash Wednesday and the Season of Lent, The Sermon on the Mount with Carl Fickensher,  The Parable of the Lost Son with Bill Cwirla all brought to you via my favorite radio program Issues,Etc

Kyrie Elieson

from Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis

We are perplexed to see misfortune falling upon decent, inoffensive, worthy people—–on capable, hard-working mothers of families or diligent, thrifty, little trades people, on those who have worked so hard, and so honestly, for their modest stock of happiness and now seem to be entering on the enjoyment of it with the fullest right.  How can I say with sufficient tenderness what here needs to be said?  It does not matter that I know I must become, in the eyes of every hostile reader, as if  I were personally responsible for all the sufferings I try to explain……But it matters enormously if I alienate anyone from the truth.

Let me implore the reader to try to believe, if only for a moment, that God, who made these deserving people, may really be right when He thinks that their modest prosperity and the happiness of their children are not enough to make them blessed:  that all this must fall from them in the end, and that if they have not learned to know Him they will be wretched.  And therefore He troubles them, warning them in advance of an insufficiency that one day they will have to discover.  The life to themselves and their families stands between them and the recognition of their need;  He makes that life less sweet to them.   I call this a Divine Humility because it is a poor thing to strike our colors to God when the ship is going down under us; a poor thing to come to Him as a last resort, to offer up “our own” when it is no longer worth keeping.  If God were proud He would hardly have us on such terms:  but He is not proud,  He stoops to conquer,  He will have us even though we have shown that we prefer everything else to Him, and come to Him because there is “nothing better”  now to be had.

On a Sunday…..
we sat listening to our Pastor finish a 12 week study on Job. His final words were:
“God doesn’t give explanations, He gives promises.”  I couldn’t stop thinking about the truth of those words.
Caiti and Cody decided to come spend the night.
We shared Christmas fun all day. We made the cutest gingerbread houses, salt dough ornaments and cookies.

On a Monday…….
Caiti and Cody decided to spend one more night. I was happy.
I couldn’t *shake* the Job quote. I’ve thought about Job a lot during the past couple of months.
How he’s such a parallel to Christ. Losing everything in one day. Without an explanation from God.

On a Tuesday……
at 4:30 in the morning, I awake to a terrifying amount of smoke. My husband miraculously crawls through the house to try to get to the kids. I am unable to follow him and jump out the nearest  window and meet him at the front door. We stand screaming and sobbing and helpless,unable to get up the stairs to our kids. Caiti, my guardian angel daughter, who only by a miracle was even sleeping upstairs, was already awake and ushering the little girls out of harms’ way. She even has the forethought to have them cover their faces with their pillow. The image of my oldest daughter ushering her sisters through mortal danger to safety will forever be imprinted on my heart.

She’s the angel on the bridge.
My forever hero.

She then runs around to the basement to wake Cody. He rescues our dogs. Less than  two minutes later, our house is engulfed in flames and  before daylight  is burned to the ground.    Everything.   Gone.   I don’t think I stop crying all day.   And shaking on the inside. I can’t stop thinking ‘what if’. And then I can’t stop saying prayers of thanksgiving. Only God can save 6 people and 2 dogs without so much as a singed strand of hair. I cannot plumb the depths of his love and mercy.

On a Wednesday……..

I wake up numb. It wasn’t a dream. My house and everything in it is gone.  I’m speechless that God’s mercy is so vast.  My children are alive and unharmed.  I ride this roller coaster all day. Overwhelming thankfulness and heavy despair, sitting side by side in my mind each trying to win the day.   I don’t even know where to start. My sister makes a list and puts me in the car to start doing what we must do to get our lives back.  She drives and I cry.  And I remember that it will soon be Christmas Eve.   Hearts full of love and mercy descend on us like I could never have imagined. People I know and love and people I don’t know at all start meeting our every need.  My neighbors step in like family and take care of us.   We are  blessed with a fully furnished unoccupied house, ready to use, right down to food in the refrigerator. Clothes, money, gift cards, Christmas gifts, calls, emails and messages of love just pouring in—more than I can count or read in one sitting. My sister painstakingly reproduces our Christmas gifts, every single one. My brother meets up with us with more love and gifts and blessings. Seeing him hurting so for me breaks my heart all over again. My heart is full and grateful.  I am overwhelmingly sad and yet unable to stop rejoicing. My mother is amazing. My husband is my rock. My children are so incredibly brave. I am blessed beyond measure. It’s as if our friends and family have become the  hands and feet of Christ, bringing love and help and healing.

On a Thursday…….
The older kids come home. I breathe a big sigh of relief . We make plans to stay *home* for Christmas despite the fact that there’s no tree and no trappings.
What a gift just to be together. While we’re gone trying to do the essentials, little angels bring us food and snacks and a Christmas tree. I come *home* to blessing after blessing. I went two whole hours without sobbing—-until I saw the tree. My friends have done so much.   My dear friend  Patty has been invaluable, coordinating, organizing but mostly knowing every perfect thing to say and bringing me an old friend, C.S. Lewis, to comfort me. My friends are priceless, by my side from the very beginning.   Sandy brought me a copy of the Lutheran prayer book that I had given her two Christmases ago. I can’t stop reading it.  My family is unbelievable, pure love and support.   Steve’s family aches for us from afar,  and bring hope and comfort to us.   They all try to be strong but I can see on their faces and hear it in their voices that they are devastated for us. They carry the weight of our burden on their faces and in their hearts. I can’t help but thinking as we celebrate the incarnation of Christ—-that this is what it means to have Christ in the flesh. He works through others, to bring hope and life.

On a Friday……..
I wake with a heavy burden.     I am reminded that it was on a very dark Friday, long ago, that our Lord laid down His life, so that through His suffering, we might live.    I finally find my way back to a computer. And the weight of it hits. I have so much of the past few years of my life and memories preserved online. Not all my earthly memories were lost. I see your messages and your love and I almost can’t bear to read them. I start to look at my blog but I can’t do it. I can’t look at my house. Not yet. But I know someday, I will sit down and look back through all my projects and all my *stuff* and it will bring such healing to have it preserved at least in some way. Everywhere I turn, I receive more than my heart and hands can hold. Our friends from Issues Etc heard the news and sent us words of grace and mercy.    Todd reminded us, serendipitously enough, of the words from Job. ‘The Lord gives the Lord takes away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.’ He also said    “Continue to trust His ‘pure, fatherly, divine goodness and mercy.’ That is founded on the very death of His Son for you. THAT he will never take away.”
Just like my pastor said, “God doesn’t give explanations. He gives promises.”

On Christmas Day……..

It’s looks on the outside like I’m functioning.  I’m eating but not tasting.  I’m existing but not living.  I do the bare necessities.   But everytime I close my eyes, I go to a lonely helpless place.  I sneak off to my bedroom to cry and call my sister.   I have been in constant prayer just to hold it somewhat together.  I know it will take time.  And I trust in His every provision.  I don’t want to be alone but I don’t want to be in a crowd.   This is perhaps the most helpless feeling I’ve ever had.   And yet it’s also the most loved and cared for I’ve ever been.   As I’ve had time to process through all the gifts of love, I’m struck by how incredibly generous people are.  And  their (your) generosity has made a permanent mark on my heart.  I will never be the same.  I have new eyes.  And I pray that this gift of seeing the world differently will stay.   That I won’t forget this mercy raining down.  That I will know like never before that Love has come, incarnate, in the flesh for me. I can hardly fathom the blessings, my children all here with me.  My perfect Christmas gift wrapped in mercy and love from my Father.

Today……..

It’s been a week since my life was forever changed.   A heaviness sets in that I worry will be my permanent friend.  I  want to really  smile.  I want my children to play.   I wish my husband could laugh.  Our friends and family have seen to all our  daily needs and so much more.   We are loved on every side.  Your calls and messages mean more than you could know.   There are brief moments when I can hope for the future.   But in the loneliness of the night, I wonder if it can  ever really  be the same?   Will everything always be tainted with little tiny pieces of devastation?  I know that God knows our groanings and He calms our  fears with promises from His word, which  can never be destroyed.  He loves us with an inexorable  love and He will burn away all impurities until we shine like gold.

He is the God of the burning bush.  He is the fourth man in the fire.  And He will lead us safely home.

Christ has come in the flesh to bear our sins, our burdens, our guilt.   To restore what has been lost.  To bring life where there’s death.   To raise from the ashes beauty untold.

We are clinging to His promises.

We are humbled by His grace.

So many of you have asked how you can help.  I so appreciate your gracious, willing spirit.   I promise that our every need is met.   And if we have needs arise, I will let you know.

My sister has provided her address if you’d like to send cards but please know that we really are well provided for and your sweet messages online have been more than enough.   My aunt sent us a generous gift card through Amazon and we will reorder our school books soon.  Love you and thank you for caring so deeply.

My sister’s name and address is:

Gina Williams
506 Helton Road
Maryville, TN  37804