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'Dying to Life' (Lent, a journey to Easter & beyond)
Ash Wednesday - March 5th
Joel 2:1-2, 12-17 or Isaiah 58:1-12
Psalm 51:1-17
2 Corinthians 5:20b - 6:10
Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21
It may not be the a practice in your particular community to do anything specific on Ash Wednesday yet there are powerful themes in the readings, inviting us to self examination and inward reflection.
Today is a day for opportunities for planned reflection rather than sermons, for allowing Scripture to speak.
Self examination - remembering we are a mixture of strengths and weaknesses, successes and failure, we get some things right and some things wrong - self examination is about building up, not just knocking us down.
Inward reflection - the renewal that comes not from ritual words, but from changed behaviour that allows the love and glory of God to be visible through us.
- rend your hearts and not your garments - Joel 2:13
- create in me a clean heart, O God, and put a new and right spirit within me - Psalm 51:10
- be reconciled to God - 2 Corinthians 5:20b
Getting ready - Lent is a time for developing a new, ongoing and life giving habit rather than as a time for abstaining from an old and life defying one. Very often the new habit will effectively replace or significantly modify the old habit anyway, and psychologically it feels so much better to be doing something positive and creative rather than all the fuss about fasting and self denial.
Prayer for today....
At the beginning of this Lenten season O God, we seek for ourselves those disciplines of body, mind and spirit that will help us embrace the reconciling ministry of Christ as our own. Amen.
- Psalm 51 could also be used - consider a paraphrase version e.g. Brandt's 'Psalms Now'
Music....
- Spirit of the living God - 134 NJSB
- God be in my head - 456 WOV
- Breathe on me, breath of God - 32O WOV