God’s centering work in us becomes the overflow of the life we live

For: The Institute of Contemporary and Emerging Worship Studies, St. Stephen’s University, Essentials Green Online Worship Theology Course with Dan Wilt

This weekend I was at both a wedding and a memorial; both events were on the same day. It was therefore a day of diverse emotions. One was a joyous occasion, celebrating a sacred union as one of life’s defining markers. The other was a time for close friends to remember and celebrate the life of a young man, who in his 30s, could not stand to live anymore and so made his own final marker by taking his life.

Both times were deeply meaningful and celebratory in there own ways and they were costly. When I woke up this morning, I felt like I had very little energy and would quite like to have not done anything, but today is a work day for me as I serve our congregation. How I was able to have energy to lead and participate in our Sunday worship gathering this evening was a work of grace.

I have often experienced that when I lack the strength – be it emotional, physical or otherwise – that is when I need to recognise that God must be my source.  He alone is enough. Today was one of those days and once again, I discovered that God is faithful. It’s one thing to know this as a truth in my head but it is another thing to have to lean into it to live!

I believed God would be there because I have journeyed long enough to know that He is the best resource there is. I have learnt – and I am still learning – what it means to have deep roots in God and let these be the places where I draw sustenance and life and strength– where God’s interior work in my own heart becomes the place of overflow into the things I do.

This week, a number of us have been reflecting on spiritual formation. We have read, discussed and reflected on people from our church history who have given deep thought (sometimes dedicating their whole lives), to what it means to have the living God ‘form his people‘.

With the influence and encouragement of these people of faith and pilgrimage, I constantly find myself drawn back to wanting to live a more contemplative life, where I am reminded that God must be my source.

I know that when I live this kind of existence by cultivating certain practices like meditation, prayer, scripture reading, serving the community and a giving out of knowing that God is faithful, then I experience God’s presence and His leading. These are the times, when I hear Henri Nouwen’s words of truth echo in my heart and mind: “To listen with obedience to the voice of God requires building up a resistance to all the other voices that compete for our attention.” When I practice contemplation I begin to hear God’s voice louder than the others.

This is no easy task. It is so easy to get caught up in the busy-ness and demands of life. The “doing” often becomes the driving force. Cultivating an inner life is constantly challenging, to keep as a priority. Though well intentioned, sometimes the “demands” of life or ministry seem to pull us away from the essential need to have our life be a response to the movement of God’s Spirit, within us.

Time has taught me that I need to remember and “recollect” who God is and remind myself every day if need be, that God is God and I am not. When I do this through regular times of  prayer, meditation, scripture reading as well as keeping Sabbath,  then it really helps me to re-centre and reorient myself back to God.

These are my life’s markers, when I invite the God of the universe into my heart, soul and mind to inform my perspective, breathe life into my soul and become my source of strength.  When I am living like this – even at times when a wedding and a funeral are on the same day -  then I know with certainty that God is present at these moments and that He will sustain me for the days ahead.

I constantly find myself drawn back to,

The Christ-child at the centre of our Kingdom expectation

For: The Institute of Contemporary and Emerging Worship Studies, St. Stephen’s University, Essentials Green Online Worship Theology Course with Dan Wilt

As the season of Advent approaches, I am always reminded of the connection this particular season has with God’s  Kingdom breaking in on us, in unusual ways.

Advent is an old latin word meaning “coming” or “visit”and its implied meaning is that there is waiting involved. The waiting involves an expectant hope for God’s Kingdom of light, healing, health, redemption, forgiveness, restoration, reconciliation etc to break in and that’s only a small part of it. We also look forward to Christ’s return – the second coming.

As Advent approaches, certain themes or memories always resurface in my mind. For one, I notice more poignantly the darkness outside: the days seem and are actually shorter and it always seems to feel colder or more dreary than usual.

Within the physical things that I experience there is a metaphor I become aware of more obviously; Advent reminds me of the great darkness and how the light of the world – in the form of a helpless baby – broke into this darkness forever. This is a wonderful mystery and I believe can help us understand how God’s Kingdom can break in on us.

How can a new born, a helpless and vulnerable child, be the one who brings light and is the light of the world?

The other memory that resurfaces as this season approaches is a song I wrote a few years ago during Advent, for Christmas. It has a way of rising up in my soul and it  reminds me of what a miracle it is that we have Saviour who came as a vulnerable child. Here are the lyrics:

The King has come

Born in a stable
Born to the poor
The King of heaven came down

Word became flesh
By the Father’s love
The Kingdom of heaven came down

Light in the darkness
Life to the world
The King of heaven came down

Choose to receive Him
Be children of the King
The Kingdom of heaven came down

Let us celebrate, let us lift our hands
Let us shout for joy to God
This baby born to us
Full of truth and love
Prince of peace and righteousness

Hallelujah the King has come
Hallelujah the King has come among us

So what on earth does this theme of light in darkness and a simple song about a baby, have to do with Kingdom expectation? Well for me it is this constant reminder that we are part of a much larger narrative in which anything is possible! It is this very upside down way that the King of the universe came to humankind, that reminds me of having expectation for God’s Kingdom arriving in surprising and unusual ways.

If the God of the universe can send his son as a trusting, weak, innocent and vulnerable child, as an announcement of good news that has changed the world then this same God is also able to change and transform us! Transform our minds, our hearts, our bodies. Anything is possible!

I think sometimes we can have a tendency to over spiritualize this thing we call Kingdom expectation.  If things aren’t going well or we don’t feel like our prayers are being answered in the way we want, we can fall into these thinking traps: ‘if only I had more faith , or more spiritual gifts or more zeal or more hope or prayed more or believed more or knew what I was actually doing’, then God’s kingdom would break in.

But I believe (and have often experienced) that God is the small acts of faith, the small risks that we take to usher in His Kingdom rule and reign. These small risks are the places where we exercise and flex our faith muscles. It means two things: listening to what God is asking of us and following in faithful obedience, even if we aren’t too sure of the outcome or even if we don’t feel very experienced.

I believe that if we can try focusing on the fact that that God risked everything to get here, to be amongst us. If we can remember that God entered our story as a baby who grew up to change the world, then it will give us faith to keep on asking for God’s Kingdom to come. If there is one thing we need to be as followers of Christ, it is to be ones who persevere and don’t give up when it is difficult or we feel insecure or we lack confidence or zeal or faith.

I know that when John Wimber, one of the founders of the Vineyard Movement, first began to believe that God could heal the sick, he called the whole church to try it out. They prayed for everyone they knew who was sick for  many months and no one was healed!  It was more than 9 months before anyone was healed but they kept on praying and they kept on asking! John and his crew kept on hoping and trusting and risking and making fools of themselves because John believed that the light had come into the world and shown a way for people to live differently and experience God differently. The baby had grown up into a man who had shown us by His words and deeds a different way to live that involved radical trust and belief that He was and is who He says He is: The King of the Universe.

This Advent I am reminded that God’s Kingdom can and does break-through in different ways. We just need to remember to fix our eyes on the God who was willing to trust human kind by coming into the world as a vulnerable child and to trust in the God who laid down His crown and entered the world as a child. We need to keep on trusting. We need to keep on risking. We need to keep worship of the Christ-child central to what we do and how we live. We need to keep on expecting and hoping for the unusual, for the surprising, for the Kingdom of God to break in when we least expect it.

How personal is our relating?

For: The Institute of Contemporary and Emerging Worship Studies, St. Stephen’s University, Essentials Green Online Worship Theology Course with Dan Wilt

It’s true that we need to have a healthy interest in the culture. We need to be open to learning, growing and gleaning from the culture around us and yet, at the same time, not getting sucked up into the vortex of its ever changing values about who is in and who’s out, about what’s in and what’s not and about what really matters.

At times it becomes exhausting and quite frankly hard to keep up with. A line in a movie that one of my roommates watched recently, sums it up in a way for me.  Although the quote has to do with dating, it indicates the changing face of interpersonal relating………..

Here’s the quote:

“I had this guy leave me a voicemail at work, so I called him at home, and then he emailed me to my BlackBerry, and so I texted to his cell, and now you just have to go around checking all these different portals just to get rejected by seven different technologies. It’s exhausting.”

Whilst quite funny – well I thought so anyway – for me it was quite telling of just how impersonal relating can become.

I do wonder if this kind of relating has had any affect on how personal or impersonal our worship of God is.  And if we spend so much of our time relating to one another through technology, does this transfer into our expectation of how we encounter God?

I don’t have the answers but I have been thinking about this a lot in recent times. I remember really resonating with a speaker called Marva Dawn at a lecture I attended this summer. ….

She said something like this: “we have technologized our intimacy and intimatized our technology”

The problem, as she saw it, was not technology per se but how its particular paradigm has shaped our thoughts, values and ideals. She addresses this idea more deeply in a book called Unfettered Hope: A Call to Faithful Living in an Affluent Society.

Don’t get me wrong, I find technology very handy for my life! I also believe that we have to engage with our culture somehow in this way because God is moving and active in our culture and if we are not looking carefully, we might not recognise Him! We need to learn to look hard enough and also expect God to be present in our culture regardless of how fragmented and broken we think it is.

So taking all these things into account, I wrestle with how technology and its prominence in  of our culture has affected our relationship with God, our relationships with one another and the body of Christ. I have also been giving thought to how this ever changing aspect of our culture has effected how we enter into worship of the living God, not just on Sundays, but throughout the week. Does it effect our expectation of God, how we experience God emotionally, intellectually.

For now I don’t have the answers. But I do belive that without realising it, our hearts and minds have been influenced by the culture around us. So how do I live personally with this tension? Well part of how I enter into these wrestles is asking myself often if I still have a heart that wants to engage with my God and with others in a healthy way.

For me, that means I want to be someone who dwells in the present, where God calls me to be most authentic and not be looking for the next best thing around the corner. I also recognise that a healthy interaction with my culture and my God means that I challenge and encourage myself and my community to let God define our ways of interacting and let God help us engage with our culture and speak truth into it at the same time.

Intimacy in worship: a healthy engagement of our hearts and minds

For: The Institute of Contemporary and Emerging Worship Studies, St. Stephen’s University, Essentials Green Online Worship Theology Course with Dan Wilt

This week we have been thinking about the values of intimacy and integrity in worship.  And, as always, I find that  it raises further questions for me.

Firstly how do we engage our hearts and our minds so that we open ourselves towards the Lord in an authentic way that is not just about having “an emotional experience” or simply “making sure we have all the right liturgical elements in place” so that  a good job is done of worship in a theological sense.  How do we engage heart and mind in worship?

In our context we have people from so many different backgrounds. People who love liturgy and engaging their minds in worship and those who love the freedom to sing song after song. We also have those who can’t read and therefore any songs that don’t have repetition are difficult for them to enter into.  So what do you do as a worship leaders with these tensions? How do you draw such an eclectic group into worshiping God?

As I was thinking about this tension,  I was reminded of my times going to see a rugby or football (soccer to others!) match when I was a teenager. In these contexts people came from all walks of life, educational backgrounds, life experience but with one goal, to engage fully in a sports event. The people at these events, weren’t simply engaged in talking about the technical expertise of the players – although that came into play – but there was a sense of people fully engaging who they are, sometimes almost involuntarily without really thinking of it. As I attended some of these venues,  I have heard powerful transcendent singing – so akin to worship that you would think you were at a huge worship event!  People’s arms in the air, people swaying, people singing with all their heart and soul – completely abandoning themselves to the energy and experience of the environment.  So if we – as humans from all walks of life and different experiences – have the capacity to do this at a sports event, how do we translate this into engaging our hearts and minds for worship of the Creator? How do we create an environment that will call all of us into worshiping God with all that we are?

For me obviously the essential difference between singing your soul out at a rugby match and worshiping God, is that we are worshiping a living being and a mysterious being at that. We worship someone we can never fully know and who we don’t fully understand.  As we enter into worship, as we enter into faith, there is a need to trust what we do know and also to embrace the recognition that we are part of a much larger narrative and worshiping history. And this is a good thing.

I believe that as we allow our minds to fully engage with these truths, we can allow our hearts to be fully engaged too. Because worship of the Lord is about engaging all of who we are, all of our senses. It’s not emotionalism versus intellectualism, but really a healthy involvement of our body, soul, spirit and our emotions.

If we make worship primarily an intellectual experience it is much too limiting and if we make it simply an emotional experience, we deny the engagement of our whole beings in worship – and God wants all of who we are. The more we worship with our whole beings focused on God, the more we are able to enter into an intimacy, authenticity and integrity in worship of the Living God. This in itself is a mystery we can’t fully unpack

There is something we can learn from the experience of those who fully engage themselves at a sports event (even if it is times it seems to be a combination of the good the bad and the ugly!). It shows us that we are made to gather and worship together and that there is something powerful that happens when we are in a place/space with a single minded goal.  To somewhat paraphrase what Brian Doerksen said in an article  entitled “Intimacy in worship” (from the magazine Inside worship), ..”intimacy is living our whole lives in the presence of God… versus living our lives to other gods”.

If we don’t consciously desire to engage our lives in full worship surrender to God time and time again, there will be other things that end up distracting us, possibly becoming idolatrous in our lives.  As Dan Wilt talked about in an article entitled “How to lead worship” (taken from Inside Worship), he believed that as worship leaders (and I believe as people who worship), our most powerful instrument is our lives, not how well we play an instrument or how loud we can sing but how we live and who we live for.

The sports analogy breaks down at different points but for me it is a reminder of what can happen as we engage all that we are consistently and allow ourselves to experience the interaction that we can have with the living God, both intellectually and emotionally.

Thank you.

week 5: a final reflection

For: The Institute of Contemporary and Emerging Worship Studies, St. Stephen’s University, Essentials Red Online Worship Theology Course with Dan Wilt

This week I was working on a project as Essentials Red wrapped up. My project had to do with communion and involved art and words and poems. I was drawn to focus on the communion cup and what it symbolized and represented. I found that I was particularly drawn to the cup of blood that it represented.

If you are interested in the process of my creative project, please click on this link.

As part of my project, I wrote a simple poem and then finished with a prayer.

Communion Cup

From death to life
From despair to hope
One life laid down
In a communion cup

One life for all
One life for love
Uniting, binding
In a communion cup

Time passes on
Seasons come and go
Unchanging truth
In a communion cup

Prayer
Lord, help us to remember the eternal, saving truth of your body broken and your blood shed – for us.
That in the mystery of remembering, we again may enter into that sacred place of receiving together, your love, forgiveness, healing and redemption.
That together, we may enter Your story, Your life, Your hope
This hope that we now have.
Amen

Today, some of us just happened to be reading John 6:53-56, and I was struck by the words that Jesus spoke about drinking his blood and eating his flesh – For those Jews who heard this, it must have sounded preposterous. And in fact in Mark’s gospel we read that many of his followers stopped following him because these words were just too hard for them to hear, receive and understand. I wonder if we would have been much different….

In a very real way communion is a time when we are reminded of our need for Jesus – our need for his very flesh on our bones, his very heart in our body. We are also reminded of our need for resurrection, our need for His strength, His power, His way in our lives. Him. It’s Him we need.

Here is Jesus in John 6: 53-56
“I tell you the truth, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in him.”

Week 4: movies, music and mourning

For: The Institute of Contemporary and Emerging Worship Studies, St. Stephen’s University, Essentials Red Online Worship Theology Course with Dan Wilt

We don’t often think of movies as art, unless of course they are particularly promoted as an artsy movie or we’ve heard the cinematography is great. We tend to think of movies more as entertainment and whether they make us laugh (or cry in fear!), rather than the particular artist expression that they create.

Just yesterday, a friend and I were visiting a lady whose brother had just died 2 weeks back. She was obviously very sad and although she is part of a large family, she had been particularly close to this brother.

Over the years, I had heard many stories of the ways she had cared for her brother when we was not doing well, when he was oppressed or being pushed around by people or when he was back drinking and things were chaotic again. As we talked, and she shared her tears and sadness mixed in with times of laughter and fond remembering, we found out things about her brother that we had never known.

Her brother had been a talented musician – self taught. She told me how he ordered a video off the TV, some 30+ years ago and taught himself the guitar. She showed me the memorial programme which one of her family members had put together. It was a beautiful work of art. It was in colour with photos of her brother’s guitars and photos of mountain bikes (which had been another love of her brothers in his youth). There were also poems on the back of the programme that had been written by family members.

As we visited together, the only thing that had been giving her any sense of comfort was this music DVD called The Last Waltz. It’s a kind of documentary film by Martin Scorsese, journeying with a band as they go from city to city. The band in the movie, are aptly called “The Band”, who I had never heard of until yesterday. I didn’t make the connection until later but in a very real sense watching this DVD was a way she was connecting with her brother in his love of music.

I only saw maybe 20 minutes of the DVD but I was struck by how beautifully filmed it was, even back in 1978. I also really enjoyed not only the skill of the musicians but also the window into their world, thoughts and the nuances of their individual characters.

It was so poignant for her to be sharing this with us. At times she would introduce things she loved about the band and the different musicians. She kept repeating that the lead singer Robbie Robertson was native. And she was obviously proud of this fact. It also gave her great comfort to have us watch something with her that she loved.

Sometimes those who mourn can be some of the most marginalized people in our society. They are often left to grieve alone. This can in part be because we think that’s what those who mourn need: space. We don’t do very well with people who are in the depths of intense emotion. Our natural response is to move away because we feel helpless or we begin to feel pain too. Sometimes, I think it is because we are are afraid of those who grieve and we don’t know what to say, so it is easier to avoid them.

What our friend needed the most was our tangible presence and room to share something she loved with us. To share both time and space. She longed for us to be present to her and the stories she had to share about the band, herself, her brother.

The other wonderful thing about our time together, was that I was introduced to something I would never have known about; she was able to share her particular love of art and music with me, and it was an intimate and privileged experienced.

I left having sensed a lot of the Lord’s presence with us and also wishing we could have stayed longer to watch the whole movie!

Week 3: Sacred Meal Times

For: The Institute of Contemporary and Emerging Worship Studies, St. Stephen’s University, Essentials Red Online Worship Theology Course with Dan Wilt

Nathan Roussou offered up a really good comment this week in his post on sacraments in today’s Christian arena. He said, “sacraments need to remain acts that communicate in a language that can be commonly and easily understood“. And this got me thinking….

It helped me remember some baptisms I have attended or been part of, in the past. Some of the people in these contexts were watching family members or friends get baptized. As some of them watched, a light seemed to go on for them and they actually finally got the Kingdom message. This wasn’t something that happened as a one off – this happened at more than one baptism! It was because they had “seen and experienced” something that helped them “get the truth” – the message had become commonly and easily understood through the symbolism (with the help of the Holy Spirit of course!). There have been a few times when what started out as one or two people getting baptized turned into the whole family receiving Jesus and choosing to be baptized!

Nathan’s comment also reminded me of how eating together can be a sacrament.

In our congregations’ experience, we eat a meal as we begin our service. I have found that eating together has become a sacred, worshipful thing. It has actually been a way I have found that Christ is brought into the meal and as a result, conversations can go quite deep.

In our context, we actually refer to our meal times together on a Sunday as the beginning of our worship time. There has been a deep richness, knowing and sharing that has happened over the years and it has become a highlight for many of us.

The wonderful thing is that eating together has extended far beyond Sunday gatherings. We are known as the congregation who like to eat – and I am not talking about getting pizza and pop – a lot of what we do is home cooked.

When we “hang out together” food is often a part of that communion. Over time people have understood that sharing a meal is more than “just eating”. With regularity, eating together has actually become quite sacramental.

week 2 – reflections on praying together

For: The Institute of Contemporary and Emerging Worship Studies, St. Stephen’s University, Essentials Red Online Worship Theology Course with Dan Wilt

To pray or not to pray that is the question!

Now, as followers of Christ we all pray somewhat regularly don’t we? And not just the desperate “I need a parking space right now” prayer, but a life that is focused on prayer…

Prayer connects us with God. It is the spiritual in and out breath that allows the Holy Spirit to come closer. If we don’t pray, we feel disconnected from God kind of like the disconnection we can feel if we haven’t talked to a close friend or our spouse for a while.

One of the guys in our Essentials Red group talked about prayer being easier in a group because there is a common purpose, there is a sense of unity and encouragement as you pray together. And yet have you ever tried to get people together to pray with any regularity??

My experience is so mixed in this regard. On the one hand we have had prayer times where the first few times, lots of people came enthusiastically! They enjoyed the time but then after a while, just a remnant would come. People were too busy with the other things of life.

Then, on the other hand I’ve known quite the opposite to happen. There have been a couple of people meeting to pray – kind of on the down low, under the radar as it were. And there are rumours that it might be going on, but no one knows for sure. And others are finding out and turning up, to join them!! We live in an interesting world and an interesting time.

Through it all, I know that “we” must pray. “We” need to pray. It is our life line and yet it is hard for us to find time to pray together – corporately – right?

For some, I think it is because prayer has become a very personal thing with God and they haven’t experienced much corporate prayer and it feels uncomfortable or awkward. For others, sometimes they get bogged down with the the thought that prayer doesn’t really feel like you’re “doing” much. It’s just seems like a lot of talk but “doing” something where you can see the outcome, has a higher value.

Prayer is mysterious. Mother Theresa prayed a lot. I can’t remember how many hours she prayed daily, but I think it was something like 4 hours every day. She prayed on her own and corporately with her sisters of charity nuns. Now, I know you’re thinking “well she was a nun and nuns pray”. But if you have ever read anything she’s written or heard any of her interviews, it’s so obvious that her life’s work with her nuns, was so steeped in prayer. How could she have kept going without prayer? How can we expect to keep going if we don’t pray?…..

When we reflect on the Jews in the Old Testament and the followers of Christ in the 1st century, we see deep, faithful rhythms of corporate prayer. It was so much part of their lives, it was as natural as breathing and as common as eating.

Now,we all need to eat. And we often eat our meals with others. Even if we live alone, there is often some time in the week when we eat a meal or have a coffee with another person. So we all have the opportunity to pray with one other person. I have much to learn about prayer. I pray a fair amount. But I recognize that I can go deeper. I want to cultivate a deeper prayer life not just in a contemplative sense but in a corporate sense, so that prayer becomes as natural as breathing. So that God is really involved in all of our day and not just at the beginning or at the end.

Week 1 – Time, Space and Sabbath Rest

For: The Institute of Contemporary and Emerging Worship Studies, St. Stephen’s University, Essentials Red Online Worship Theology Course with Dan Wilt

Thinking about time and space more intentionally this week has reminded me once again about the importance of keeping sabbath. My friend Lance talked about idolatry this week and how in the west we tend to often equate it with materialism but he really reminded us that idolatry is when we put anything before God, where we make anything more important that God. Anything! This is much more challenging than we think.

Consider for example what we do on the day we set aside as our sabbath. How much of us actually take a sabbath really! We may go to church on our sabbath day – a day unto the Lord – but what are we doing with the rest of our time? Maybe this is a bit of a stretch as I think about time and space but this understanding of sabbath has maybe somehow been lost in our culture in some way. Stores are open on Sunday, we do much to busy ourselves in the way of planning for the rest of the week on our sabbath. How many of us check email on Sunday?

Is God really Lord of our time? Lord of the sabbath? And especially if we are working for the church in some sort of serving capacity or pastoral capacities – are we really getting sabbath rest? What does it mean to have Sabbath rest, really?

I have been trying to have Saturday as my sabbath these days – trying to remember that God is Lord over time. Lord over space and time. This is hard for me as a pastor. I always feel that there is so much to do and that I need to make things happen but actually I know God must be the centre. He meant something when he said “remember the sabbath and keep it holy” (Exodus 20). He said this because he knew that we would forget and that we would have a tendency to try to be self reliant. Remembering why we do things is really important as we live as followers of Christ. And therefore having time to reflect on why we do things is equally important.

When I think about time and space, I have a lot to learn from the ancients and the early church about how they used time and space. In particular, how they had rhythms of prayer and rhythms of life that they had followed as Jews, for thousands of years. This kept them centred on who was most important. This kept them centred on who was their strength, their source.

I want to learn more about time and space, especially as it relates to Sabbath. And in the meantime, maybe I should re-read some wonderful books on the subject that helped me a few years ago when I was giving this subject a great deal of thought:Keeping the Sabbath Wholly by Marva Dawn and The Rest of God by Mark Buchanan.

Ash Wednesday 2009 Liturgy

Introduction:

The practice of Ash Wednesday and Lent originated in the 4^th century and it is the beginning of 40 days of lent. Sundays are not usually included but can be times to break the fast, times of celebration. Traditionally it has been a time of fasting and/or sacrifice, prayer and almsgiving (time/money to the poor and those in need).

Lent is an occasion when Christians through the ages have taken time to experience their part in the Passion (suffering) of Jesus. It is also a way historically, that as followers of Christ we imitate Jesus’ withdrawal into the wilderness as He prepared for ministry by facing temptation.

As people, we are often more comfortable with the joy and celebration of Easter than with the darkness that goes before it. However, I believe that as we choose to enter into the season of Lent, we will find a unique way to once again face our humanity and realise that sin still dwells in us, that we still carry darkness and that Christ can meet us in those places. It also gives us an opportunity to remember and to be reflective on the dark before the dawn, the sin that sent Jesus to the cross. So as we choose to practice lent, we will actually increase our appreciation of Easter and the miracle of what Jesus has done and the season of Easter will take on more significance for us.

As a way to get ready for Lent (usually before we get to Ash Wednesday), a good place to start is to ask ourselves some questions to help us prepare our hearts.

Begin by thinking about what could be sacrificed that will cause us to remember our need for God or increase our desire for God. What can we give up to experience what lack is like?

This is why ‘fasting’ from something is a helpful practice because as we miss that ‘thing’ that we enjoy, we our reminded of our reason for giving it up and drawn once again to our need for God and our reliance on God’s mercy.

What does God want us to experience this year? What does God want to say to us? Lent is a great time to focus more intentionally on these things.

Preparation will require slowing down and spending some time listening to our hearts and to the Holy Spirit.

One friend of mine chose to “take on” something for the season of Lent. She spent every day of Lent getting up early and watching for the sun. She experienced an appreciation of nature and the gift of a new day that she has never forgotten. Others of us have chosen to give up something like coffee, chocolate or taken to riding the bus for a month instead of driving the car!

Whatever you choose to give up or choose to take on, remember what it is about and may you be blessed as you meet God in those places.

Here is a liturgical service I have put together for Ash Wednesday as a way to start the season of Lent together. Some of the prayers have been used with kind permission of the Iona Community and Grandview Calvary Baptist. Here is the service leader’s copy Ash Wednesday 2009 Leader and here is the copy you can print off for participants Ash Wednesday 2009 Participants

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