Lent 3
Lent: Living in the Wilderness
The season of Lent has a lot to do with wilderness. Designed to imitate the 40 days Jesus spent in the wilderness, Lent includes the 40 days (minus Sundays) between Ash Wednesday and Easter. In this season we are invited to enter instead of avoid wilderness. We are encouraged to embrace discomfort, instead of letting it be a deterrent...trusting that there is life there.
Scripture Reading: 1 Samuel 24:1-22
In the chapters leading up to this passage, David and his men are in the wilderness hiding from Saul and his men who are pursuing them because Saul wants to kill David. In this chapter, David has an opportunity to kill Saul and chooses to not do it.
What do you notice about why he makes this choice?
Practice:
We invite you to embrace the wilderness experience during this Lenten season.
This week, we suggest choosing the spiritual practice of “lowering your guard.”
“We all have our defenses known (my unwillingness to give up something I want) and unknown (my reflexive self-hatred, my reflexive judgment of others) keeping us from deeper relationship with God, self, and others. Lenten practices aren’t a form of self-punishment or rote legalism—which is, by the way, why I think it’s a perfectly reasonable thing to have your Lenten practice become clear to you even halfway through Lent. Lenten practices are the things that help us to let down our guard, to lower those defenses, so that the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit might slip even more deeply into our hearts.” — Tara Owen, anamcara.com
Do you ever see this pattern (described by Nouwen below) of accusation or criticism leading to defensiveness and then self-rejection in your life?
“As soon as someone accuses me or criticizes me, as soon as I am rejected, left alone, or abandoned, I find myself thinking, "Well, that proves once again that I am a nobody." ... [My dark side says,] I am no good... I deserve to be pushed aside, forgotten, rejected, and abandoned. Self-rejection is the greatest enemy of the spiritual life because it contradicts the sacred voice that calls us the "Beloved." Being the Beloved constitutes the core truth of our existence." — Henri J.M. Nouwen
How will you let down your guard during Lent?
What are some of the things you are defensive about? Who are some people that you are defensive toward?
How will you participate in something that will open you more to God?
And if you can’t let down your guard, how might you take the gracious invitation to lower it, just a little?
Stories from the Wilderness
Each week this blog page includes a story, written by one of our elders, in which they reflect on a wilderness experience in their life.
The story this week is written by Colleen Carey.
I have hiked deep into mountain wilderness and felt the overwhelming beauty of God's creation. However, my "wilderness experiences" have occurred in quiet, everyday settings.
A number of years ago, I remember feeling very close to God for several months when, in conjunction with fatigue and sorrow, I felt deeply inadequate. What I had to offer was trivial compared to the need around me. I embraced my inadequacy and this became a way to escape the feeling altogether. I shut out my feelings and I shut out God. I don't remember the exact circumstances when I abruptly realized that God had not abandoned me, but I had pulled away from Him. This came to me very suddenly. I learned again of the power of prayer, reaching out to God and allowing him to sort me out.