After a few years of celebrating Advent and Lent, I am finding them a nice "spiritual corrective". If in Advent, I am taught a particular lesson, I have a few months between Christmas and Lent to apply that to life, and then Lent starts and I get to reexamine my apprenticeship with Jesus and then a bit more than half a year to practice before another Advent and another season of reflection. Anyways, Lent this year is rather late and starts tomorrow, March 5th.
Lent is frequently associated with "giving up" something of removing something such as meat from the diet, or sweets, or tv, or social media. People have lots of reactions to this. One useful voice in the commentary is this talk on asceticism by Dallas Willard. The language is a bit heady, but it's worth the work to get through.
Lent is typically conceived of as the 46 day period between Ash Wednesday and the Saturday before Easter. A number of people have recommended using the time for focused reading in the Bible. Here are a few plans I found.
Small: The Gospels
Medium: The New Testament
Large: The whole Bible
For something different: Readings from the Church Fathers
EDIT: The above link lists a website for the readings that is incorrect. It should be http://www.churchyear.net/lentfatherscomplete.pdf
God bless you as we journey toward Easter.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment