Jesus said, "…but unless you repent, you will all perish
as they did." Luke 13:3
We are now solidly in the midst of Lent. According to the
Book of Common Prayer, it is a time set aside by the church for
self-examination and repentance. In the passage from Luke for the third Sunday
in Lent, Jesus begs us to repent. It can all get quite depressing, and many of
us wonder whether we should add sack cloth and ashes to the mix of our Lenten
disciplines.
Certainly, we should all take inward time to examine where we may fall short of God's dream for each one of us. And certainly we should take time to think seriously about how we might better align our lives with God's plan for us, but Lent is not all about self-flagellation and despair. If we focus on despair, and develop a self-loathing for our own sinfulness, we can miss the point of Lent. But…. If we observe a season of prayer, fasting, self-examination and penitence, we wil discover something new about God and begin to understand the potent gift God offers us: absolution and pardon.
The sack cloth and ashes perspective makes it "all about us," but if we take seriously the call to the observance of a holy Lent, we will begin to better understand God's loving responses to us. We begin to realize that it's not "all about us" and discover, instead, that it's all about God's grace and God's infinite love.
Certainly, we should all take inward time to examine where we may fall short of God's dream for each one of us. And certainly we should take time to think seriously about how we might better align our lives with God's plan for us, but Lent is not all about self-flagellation and despair. If we focus on despair, and develop a self-loathing for our own sinfulness, we can miss the point of Lent. But…. If we observe a season of prayer, fasting, self-examination and penitence, we wil discover something new about God and begin to understand the potent gift God offers us: absolution and pardon.
The sack cloth and ashes perspective makes it "all about us," but if we take seriously the call to the observance of a holy Lent, we will begin to better understand God's loving responses to us. We begin to realize that it's not "all about us" and discover, instead, that it's all about God's grace and God's infinite love.
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