một, hai, ba ...

Lent 1

A few notes/quotes from last evening's Ash Wednesday service...

"Spare Your people, O Lord, and make not your heritage a reproach, a byword among the nations. Why should they say among the peoples, "Where is their God"" - Joel 2:17b

Do you give from a posture of humble gratitude because you know Your Father loves you and cares for you?

You are not the sum of your cravings, lusts, desires. We say "yes" to denial [of ourselves] so that we can say "yes" to dependence [on our God alone].

Where is your heart?

This is a deliberate season, a peculiar season, a tithe of your year, given to dependent intimacy with your Father. And we are entering this season, together.

Of Lent and Birthdays

I love that my birthday falls simulaneous with Lent this year. I love that I was able (thanks to Anthony generously staying home with sleeping Beckham) to go to an Ash Wednesday service tonight at my brother's new church and begin the season of Lent and my imminent entrance into the decade of my 30's with a time of quiet worship, repentence, and consideration of the days ahead.

I am hoping to embrace a daily discipline this Lent of writing, and that will partly involve posting a daily reflection here on this little blog. I'd love to hear your own reflections, prayers, scriptures, musings, and so forth, along the way. As my brother noted tonight, Lent, being 40 days, is in many ways a rounded-up tithe of our time in a year - 40 being just over 10% of 365 days. All time belongs to our Maker, but I'm encouraged to find ways to be deliberate in surrendering "my" time in fresh ways to God in these days ahead.