Lenten Meditation Guide -
Week 5
Into New Life
Ezekiel 37:1-14 I will put my spirit within you, and you shall live…(37:14 NRSV)
“O God, within this strange and quickened dust
The beating heart controls the coursing blood
In discipline that holds in check the flood
But cannot stem the corrosion and dark rust.
In flesh’s solitude I count it blest
That only you, my Lord, can see my heart
With passion’s darkness tearing it apart
With storms of self and tempests of unrest.
But your love breaks through blackness, bursts with light;
We separate ourselves, but you rebind
In Dayspring all our fragments; body, mind,
And spirit join, unite against the night.
Healed by your love, corruption and decay
Are turned, and whole, we greet the light of day.”
~ Madeleine L’Engle, The Weather of the Heart, p. 9
Psalm 130
O Israel, put your hope in the LORD, for with the LORDis unfailing love
and with himis full redemption. He himself will redeem Israelfrom all their sins.(130:7-8 NIV)
“Take the Law in the Old Testament, for instance. Everyone talks about it as if it’s some kind of third person standing outside of or in between God and us – as if we and God are looking at each other not in a relationship of care but over both our shoulders at a prosecutor called the Commandments who tells God to hate us and us to fear God. But if you actually read the Old Testament, the Law isn’t presented that way at all. It’s presented as a Covenant a relationship between God and his people. Sure, the people break the Covenant; and sure, God tells them in no uncertain terms that they’re messing up royally. But from Genesis to Malachi (and from Matthew to Revelation under the New Covenant), God never considers canceling the relationship because of the messes.”
~ Robert Farrar Capon, The Mystery of Christ &why we don’t get it, pp.58-9
Romans 8:6-11
But if Christ is in you, although your bodies are dead because of sin, your spirits are alive because of righteousness.(8:10 RSV)
“Now the whole offer which Christianity makes is this: that we can, if we let God have His way, come to share in the life of Christ. If we do, we shall then be sharing a life which was begotten, not made, which always has existed and always will exist. Christ is the Son of God. If we share in this kind of life we also shall be [children] of God. We shall love the Father as He does and the Holy [Spirit] will arise in us. He came to this world and became a [human being] in order to spread to other [human beings] the kind of life He has – by what I call ‘good infection.’ Every Christian is to become a little Christ….”
~ C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, p. 154
John 11:1-45
Jesus said to her,” I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?” She said to him, “Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world.” (11:25-27 NRSV)
“The resurrection of Jesus is not easy to believe in. There are a lot of tricksters in the world and a lot of fakes. How do we know the resurrection was not a hoax? ...John [the gospel of John] doesn’t shout at us that we have to believe, no matter what. He knows that the best belief includes an intelligent, searching mind [like Martha’s]. He doesn’t want us to believe blindly; he wants us to believe on the basis of good evidence. His gospel is full of ‘signs’ (we might almost call them ‘evidences’) – events in Jesus’ life that provide self-authenticating data that he is God’s Son, the Savior of the world.”
~ Eugene H. Peterson, Subversive Spirituality, pp. 105-6, 107
A Lenten Prayer
“Almighty and everlasting God, who, of thy tender love towards mankind, hast sent thy Son our Saviour Jesus Christ, to take upon him our flesh, and to suffer death upon the cross, that all mankind should follow the example of his great humility: Mercifully grant, that we may both follow the example of his patience, and also be made partakers of his resurrection; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.”
