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Jesus prayed. That is so astounding. It is astounding because of who he was (and is): he was God himself, eternal, there before the foundation of the world, the architect of the foundation of the world. He knew God’s purposes from all eternity, for they were his purposes. He knew them during his human life, as he himself makes clear on many occasions. Why would this person need to pray?
“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.” (Matthew 5:8, ESV)
Fasting is the spiritual discipline most closely associated with Lent. In fact, before we had the word “Lent” (which dates from around the 12th century), it was often just called “the forty day fast.”
“And a voice came from heaven, ‘You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased.’ The Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness.” (Mark 1:11-12, ESV)
Repentance is the central purpose of Lent because sin is the central reality in our lives. As long as we fail to see this, as long as we think of sin as some side note to our being, as something we do rather than something we are, we are failing to really see the depths of our desperation and wildness of the salvation offered to us.
Lent is a time of consecration. It is a time set aside for us to intentionally dedicate and rededicate ourselves to the work of the Lord, to bringing our efforts in tune with the work of Christ. His forty days shape and guide our forty days. And so at the end of our forty days, we hope to arrive at a place like the place to which Christ arrived at the end of his.
Every year for 17 centuries, in the 46 days leading up to Easter, the church has set aside a season to prepare for the rejoicing that is Easter. Practices have differed during that time, and so there is no one right way to observe Lent. But there are patterns and principles. What I want to do over the course of the next 7 weeks is to look closely at these practices and principles, with the hope that you will find inspiration for your own walk of discipleship.
With so much to teach our children and so little time, why should we include church history? What did Isaac Newton mean when he said he could look further because he stood on the shoulders of giants?
Before 43 BC, the Romans employed a lunar calendar. Lunar calendars had been widely used since very ancient times in many cultures because the phases of the moon are clearly visible to even a non-astronomer. To calculate the passage of time according to the phases of the moon we only need to look up to the sky.
It was the kind of question that a professor longs for, and the student asked it with genuine interest. In an age when we scan articles in minutes and read more tweets than books, the question is fair. Russian novels are usually hundreds of pages long, filled with more darkness than our sunny American dispositions are used to, and the characters have between two to three names each, one more unpronounceable than the next. And yet . . .
It is said that there are two kinds of people in the world: those who distill people into two kinds of people, and those who do not.
I am a member of the former group and my favorite way to do said categorizing utilizes two archetypes within the prodigal son narrative: Prodigals and Older Brothers. When Christ came to reconcile all things, he told us our story: the good Father who gave a holy inheritance, the Prodigal son who squandered it, and the Older Brother who refused to acknowledge it as lost, thus striving his whole life to earn what can only be given. The difference between them is fundamental: what motivates them? Prodigals are desire-driven people; Older Brothers are duty-driven.
