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Fasting and freedom
This Lent has been a challenge in my heart to not focus as much on my personal piety and fasting as it has been on setting the captive free. Isaiah 58 has been my base text. This is a note from a study Bible I reference from time to time on Isaiah 58:6. Fasting and following religious rituals will not…
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Setting the oppressed free
Is not this the fast that I choose:to loose the bonds of injustice,to undo the thongs of the yoke,to let the oppressed go free,and to break every yoke? (Isa. 58:6) Let the oppressed go free. Israel had those definitions set early in their history and it was repeated through the generations.
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Reset toward justice
Isaiah 58 will be my grounding text for Lent. I can get caught up in fasting “correctly” and making sure I do some readings. What I am challenged in this season is the walk I have in this world.
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FOCUS… it is Ash Wednesday
May I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world. (Gal. 6:14) “The Cross is the great revealer, exposing the temporary stuff of earth and directing our hearts and minds toward the everlasting substance of eternity.” — Jay Kim
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The journey of Lent
It is coming to the time of Lent in the Church calendar. This is a time of “penitence, fasting, and prayer, in preparation for the great feast of the resurrection” (BCP 2019). I have appreciated Easter far more since entering into the Anglican tradition. Lent gives me the pause and reflection needed to truly sense the power of the Resurrection.
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The day the revolution began
“The death of Jesus was the moment when the great gate of human history, bolted with iron bars and overgrown with toxic weeds, burst open so that the Creator’s project of reconciliation between heaven and earth could at last be set in powerful motion. The myrtle will at last replace the brier, and the cypress the thorn.” (N.T. Wright —…
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The image bearers and a broken creation
We are reading through Lisa Sharon Harper’s excellent book The Very Good Gospel in a small group at our church for Lent. It is a powerful book focusing on the broken relationships we see all around and the longing to restore shalom in the world. One example: When we deprive people of the ability to exercise dominion (agency) and then…
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Mercy is not always received
Now say to the people of Judah and those living in Jerusalem: This is what the Lord says: I am a potter preparing a disaster for you; I’m working out a plan against you. So each one of you, turn from your evil ways; reform your ways and your actions. But they said, “What’s the use! We will follow our…
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The Gospel and “Defund the Police”
One of the mantras conservative white Christians have decided to “debunk” so we can get back to our safety bunkers is “Defund the Police.” It really caught our attention after the murder of George Floyd.
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“Being saved” and “getting to heaven”
When we have typically thought of the gospel in western evangelicalism, it has been around the questions like, “How are my sins forgiven?” and “How do I get to heaven?” N.T. Wright turns my thinking in a different direction:
Tag: Lent
