Lent on A Geek's Life

34. Flitting

Mon, 30 Mar 2020 10:13:53 +0000

For Lent Week 5, Monday. A response to the CoE’s #LiveLent reflection for the day. Photo by A Perry on Unsplash

\\\* Without a care the birds flit blithely between the trees, their bare branches lit briefly as though by the light of exploding stars, bright colours and persistent chirps in their own ways declaring this is good.

25. Rest

Sat, 21 Mar 2020 13:56:15 +0000

For Week 3, Weekend of the CoE’s #LiveLent Devotional:

\\\* The curse on the slithering snake is to toil ceaselessly, to eke each day’s living from the benighted earth. The promise we hold to is the blessing of the seventh, that after six summers of toil, the seventh brings rest and healing.

23. Impermanence

Thu, 19 Mar 2020 18:02:51 +0000

For Week 3, Thursday:

\\\* The rush of locusts leaves the trees - once lush and green - bare, each fading away in the impermanence, of fields destroyed; the ground mourning the demise of a raw and an exquisite beauty. This is how the earth groans, curled up in pain at the wilfulness of wanton waste, a silent witness to the marks we’ve missed. We bring our clay, our bodies and and our burdens to this place to this aftermath of loss, and hope for redemption, that this place broken in the moment can be whole and holy once again.

22. Salvation

Wed, 18 Mar 2020 18:50:18 +0000

For Week 3, Wednesday:

\\\* Drop by drop flake by flake the seeds of life are coming and going a stairway between heaven and earth, words watering it with life, calling a harvest from dry things. Each seed is becoming a harvest; of redemption and salvation - joy returning where sadness once reigned.

21. River side

Tue, 17 Mar 2020 08:55:46 +0000

For the Week 3, Tuesday reflection in the CoE’s #LiveLent Devotional:

\\\* Trees planted by the river are blessed with the fortitude to resist the howling of the wind the pounding of the waves and the dying the heat and drying bring. Their roots hold together the soil, their leaves stay green even in the season of forgetting. So hold me, tell my heart to trust, to not waver in this season of distress.

13. Water, Again

Mon, 09 Mar 2020 19:42:08 +0000

For Day 11 of the CoE’s Lent 2020 Devotional.

\\\* I come thirsty for your water, for its wetting and its washing for how it revivifies my dead and dying places making their hard, worn edges into soft and pliant spaes. I come thirsty, head bowed in quiet supplication, to live again.

11. Light and Darkness

Sat, 07 Mar 2020 22:30:09 +0000

For Week 1, Weekend of the CoE’s #LiveLent Devotional

\\\* Into the dark night light shines, bit by bit driving fear away

5. First Day

Sun, 01 Mar 2020 10:21:07 +0000

For Week 1, Sunday of the CoE’s #LiveLent Devotional \\\* Over the cold dark swirling mists, the Spirit breathes then speaks: Light, come forth.

4. Blessed Are Those Who Hunger and Thirst After Righteousness

Mon, 25 Mar 2019 05:50:48 +0000

The next Beatitude begs the question what is righteousness, and how can we hunger and thirst after it? The Lent Pilgrim devotionals over the past few days have highlighted a few dimensions of this.

First off from Romans 12:9-21 comes the idea of right behaviour, attitudes and actions which are in keeping with our Christian worldview. The implication here is that righteousness involves swimming against the flow, being truly counter-cultural in demonstrating love in spite of what moulds the wider world with its focus on personal attainment and looking out for number one seeks to press us in. The takeaway here is that we are to “overcome evil with good”(v21).

3. Blessed Are The Meek

Wed, 20 Mar 2019 17:35:31 +0000

The focus for the last five days has been the Third Beatitude, Blessed are the Meek. Of the many definitions the Strong’s bible dictionary gives to the Greek ‘ praus’, two stand out - a disposition of spirit in which we accept His[God’s] dealings with us as good, and therefore without disputing or resisting and wholly relying on God rather than their own strength to defend them against injustice – which both speak to an acceptance of his Sovereignty. The Lent Pilgrim devotional chose to highlight other elements of this in the life of Jesus the quintessential meek one; his humility in not grasping equality with God (Phil 2:7) and playing the servant, washing his disciple’s feet (Jn 13:1-15).

2. Blessed Are Those Who Mourn

Fri, 15 Mar 2019 04:14:34 +0000

For Day 10 of The Church of England’s 40 Day Lent Pilgrim Journey

Read: Romans 8:35-39

This week, the focus has been on the second beatitude: Blessed are those who mourn for they shall be comforted. Today’s reading sets out the wider framework within which we ought to view mourning (and all the things that can precipitate it in our lives). Nothing can separate us from the Love of God in Christ Jesus.

Lent Pilgrim, Day 1: Begin Here

Wed, 06 Mar 2019 06:07:37 +0000

For Day 1 of The Church of England’s 40 Day Lent Pilgrim Journey Read: Matthew 5:1-10

Matthew 5: 1-10, or as more popularly known - The Sermon on the Mount - represents Jesus thoughts on eight ideas for an uncommon life. Thanks to the CoE’s Lent Pilgrim journey for Lent this year, I’ll be reading along and making notes on here as I can.

For the (like me) unobservant, Lent is the six week period leading to Easter celebrated by Christians of a more traditional bent, with the focus being a time of solemn reflection and preparation for marking the death and resurrection of Jesus at Easter.

Lent

Tue, 13 Feb 2018 18:56:43 +0000

Photo by Thuong Do on Unsplash

This year for lent, I am taking up the challenge from Desiring God to read through John Piper’s book, Fifty Reasons Jesus Came To Die. Whilst that may or may not be more spiritual than giving up caffeine, what is not in doubt is that it is firmly aligned with a few of the things I want to achieve this year, notably read more books, and developing a daily practice of prayer and bible study. At a chapter a day (and two on Good Friday, Holy Saturday, and Easter Sunday), it shouldn’t be too big a strain on all the other reading I’m doing. Win-win? I’d say so!