Meditations

“Before three thousand people were brought into the Church on the day of Pentecost, the disciples had spent fifty days in prayer, fasting, and spiritual travail…John Knox travailed in prayer, and the Church in Scotland expanded into new life. John Wesley travailed in prayer, and the Methodist movement was born. Martin Luther travailed in prayer, and the Reformation was underway.

God desires that Christians be concerned and burdened for a lost world. If we pray this kind of prayer, an era of peace may come into the world and hordes of wickedness may be turned back. “As soon as Zion travailed, she brought forth her children” (Isaiah 66:8).”

Billy Graham in The Secret of Happiness (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1985) 36-37.

Why pray, fast, and travail in Lent? Through trailing saints God transforms hosts of sinners. I don’t have to convince people that our world today is filled with wickedness. I am suggesting that the answer for our world is not to legislate morality but rather to pray, fast, and travail persistently (cf. Luke 18:1-8). Do you pray for the lost be locked up behind bars or, like Graham, do you pray for them to find life in Jesus?

Today marks the beginning of the second week of Lent. We have six weeks to go on our journey to the cross. One thing I pray each of us discovers through prayer and fasting is the fruit of travail. Here’s my lenten challenge. Identify one lost soul for which you are willing to travail daily this Lent. Ask God to draw that person to Christ. Commit to sharing the Gospel with them if He opens the door for you.

“It helps and profits in the spiritual life to abhor in its totality and not in part whatever the world loves and embraces, and to accept and desire with all possible energy whatever Christ our Lord has loved and embraced. Just as the men of the world, who follow the world, love and seek with such great diligence honors, fame, and esteem for a great name on earth, as the world teaches them, so those who proceed spiritually and truly follow Christ our Lord love and intensely desire everything opposite.”

Ignatius of Loyola (1491-1556) in “The Constitutions of the Society of Jesus and Their Complementary Norms” 101, as recounted in Lent and Easter: Wisdom from St. Ignatius of Loyola, comp. by James L. Connor (Liguori: Liguori Publications 2009) 64.

Letting go of the things of this world and embracing the things of Christ is precisely the function of fasting, prayer, and giving in Lent. Ignatius elsewhere calls Christ-followers to consider through meditation and contemplation what “inordinate attachments” or worldly affections must be cast aside in the journey of life (Spiritual Exercises 1; cf. 1 John 2:15).

In modern terms, Ignatius is calling each of us to think about what we desire with “all possible energy” and ask ourselves how that compares with Christ and the world? We do this so that nothing thwarts the expression of His love through each of us. What do you desire? In what do you invest time? On what do you spend money? Would onlookers say your actions look like the world or appear as Christ?

Ignatius concludes his Spiritual Exercises by stating that “love ought to manifest itself in deeds rather than words” (230). Let’s pray to that end: Father in heaven, we come to you in the name of Jesus asking You to graciously reveal to us our worldly affections by Your Holy Spirit, and help us replace them with the things that You love, so that our lives, in word and deed, make You known to the world. Amen.

“Take a look at your heart. Everything you see in it that might sadden God, remove. God wants to come to you. Listen to Christ your Lord: “My Father and I will come to him and make our home with him” (John 14:23). That is God’s promise. If I were to tell you I was coming to stay with you, you would clean your house.

Now it is God who wants to come into your heart. Do you not hasten to purify it? How could he dwell with avarice? …God has commanded you to clothe the naked. But avarice induces you to strip the one who is clothed…I am looking at your heart. What do you have in it? Have you filled your coffers but thrown away your conscience? …Purify your heart.”

Augustine of Hippo (354-430) in Sermons 261.4 (PL 38,1203-4) as recounted in “Passions Transfigured, Thoughts Transcended” in The Roots of Christian Mysticism by Olivier Clément, 2.4.

Lent is a great time to clean house, both in our hearts and in our homes, so that God will dwell in them through faith. In Augustine’s thinking, giving to the poor, which in those days would have been put in “coffers”, is absolutely meaningless before God if our hearts, our “consciences”, are not right.

Where’s your conscience? Before approaching any coffers this Lent, ask God today to show you areas of your heart in need of cleaning. Come close to God, and God will come close to you. Wash your hands, you sinners; purify your hearts, for your loyalty is divided between God and the world. James 4:8

“Whether we give alms, pray, or fast, we are to do it in a hidden way, not to be praised by people but to enter into closer communion with God. Lent is a time of returning to God. It is a time to confess how we keep looking for joy, peace, and satisfaction in many people and things surrounding us, without really finding what we desire. Only God can give us what we want…Lent is a time of refocusing, of reentering the place of truth and reclaiming our true identity.”

Henri Nouwen (1932-1996) from Sabbatical Journey: The Diary of His Final Year as recounted in Lent and Easter Wisdom from Henri J.M. Nouwen, comp. by Judy Bauer (Liguori: Liguori Publications, 2005) 8.

On this, the first “feast day” of Lent (if you are new to lenten practice, a “feast day” means a break from the 40 days of fasting), let us pause to reflect on why we are doing this. Why are we learning the hidden way? It’s not for others. It’s for us. It’s to help each of us recalibrate our lives to Christ.

For today’s feast, let’s read (“feast on”) Jesus’ instructions for us in Matthew 6:1-18. In this text, I see Jesus reorienting giving, praying, and fasting from pathways for seeking human recognition (“give…pray…fast…to get praised by others”) to pathways for gaining heavenly reward (do this, as Nouwen said, to refocus, reenter the place of truth, and reclaim our true identity).

What do you see in this passage? Do you sense the Holy Spirit speaking to your heart as you read God’s Word. How do you give? How do you pray? How do you fast? Identify one thing you have learned about the hidden way today and put it into practice this week. Don’t talk to anyone else about it, but in your daily prayer time, talk to God about what you are learning.

“The fact that we can pray is not something to be taken for granted. It is true that prayer is a natural need of the human heart, but that does not give us any right before God…We pray to the God in whom we believe through Christ…We can know that God knows what we need before we ask for it. That gives our prayer the greatest confidence and a happy certainty. It is neither a formula nor the number of words but faith that reaches God in his fatherly heart, which has long known us. The proper prayer is not a deed, not an exercise, not a pious attitude, but the petition of a child to the heart of the Father.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945) in God is on the Cross: Reflections on Lent and Easter, trans. by O.C. Dean, Jr., comp. and ed. by Jana Riess (Louisville: WJKP, 2012) 4.

As I explore prayer in silence this lenten season, I am realizing that I can’t do anything to be loved, because I am already fully known and deeply loved. My true self slowly comes into view as I discover that the Father is profoundly safe. In sweet communion, prayer appears as a gift enlivened with “happy certainty” and confidence. I learn to rest, and I find peace knowing that He knows my needs and I shall not want.

So why does He encouraged me to ask for things I think I need? It’s not because He does not know them, it’s because I don’t know Him. When I consider how loved I am, I get a glimpse of the heart of the Father, which causes my love for Him to grow (cf. 1 John 4:19). That’s what I am learning so far with regard to prayer this Lent. What a gift of happy certainty! What are you learning? Share it with someone today.

“Beneficence may exist without benevolence, arising from a sense of duty, not from sympathy or compassion. It may be a charity of the hand rather than of the heart. There is an apparent beneficence which has no connection either with right principle or right feeling, as when we throw alms to a beggar, not to relieve him of his distress, but ourselves of his importunity of the pain of beholding him.”

Horace Smith (1779-1849) English writer in Day’s Collacon compiled and arranged by Edward Parsons Day (New York: IPPO, 1884) 66.

Since Lent is a time to practice Christian generosity, we must start by asking what God cares about linked to giving? He looks at what’s going on inside us and desires to see cheerful giving motivated by love for our neighbor and those in need (cf. John 10:25-37; 2 Corinthians 9:7).

So let’s evaluate our giving honestly. In Smith’s terms, do we practice beneficence (from the hand) or benevolence (from the heart)? Do we give to assuage our guilt or to show God’s love? Do we give to try to make problems go away? When we choose to extend charity from the heart, it does not result in God loving us more. So what happens when we extend such divine charity? People see and feel God’s love through us!

Father, fill our hearts with your love this Lent. Teach us to extend charity from the heart toward our neighbor and the needy around us. Help us serve those in distress, so we do not miss out on the opportunity to show the world your love and generosity. Do this we pray in the name of Jesus. Amen.

“The purest faith has to be tested by silence in which we listen for the unexpected, in which we are open to what we do not yet know, and in which we slowly and gradually prepare for the day when we will reach out to a new level of being with God…Here we see the creative power and fruitfulness of silence. Not only does the silence give us a chance to understand ourselves better, to get a truer and more balanced perspective on our own lives in relation to the lives of others…It helps us to concentrate on a purpose that really corresponds not only the deeper needs of our own being but also to God’s intentions for us.

This is a really important point. When we live superficially, when we are always outside ourselves, never quite “with” ourselves, always divided and pulled in many directions by conflicting plans and projects, we find ourselves doing many things that we do not really want to do, saying things we do not really mean, needing things we do not really need, and exhausting ourselves for what we secretly realize to be worthless and without meaning in our lives: Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy? Listen carefully to me, and eat what is good, and delight yourselves in rich food. (Isaiah 55:2).

Thomas Merton (1915-1968) in Love and Learning (Toronto: McGraw Hill, 1979) 42-43.

As Jenni and I discussed our approach to prayer and fasting this Lenten season, we have both felt drawn to carve out time daily for solitude. Merton writes much about the value of this practice for our faith and, in this text, celebrates the fruitfulness of silence: we learn more about God and ourselves.

Merton also brings to light how solitude becomes the pathway to real “rich” food. Want some? We invite you to join us in “listening carefully” this Lent. May we learn to discern the stuff in our lives that does not satisfy, so we can fast from it, and instead, partake of that which is good, delightful, and rich!

“We–or at least I–shall not be able to adore God on the highest occasions if we have learned no habit of doing so on the lowest. At best, our faith and reason will tell us that He is adorable, but we shall not have found him so, not have “tasted and seen.”

Any patch of sunlight in a wood will show you something about the sun which you could never get from reading books on astronomy. These pure and spontaneous pleasures are “patches of Godlight” in the woods of our experience.”

C.S. Lewis in Letters to Malcomb: Chiefly on Prayer (Orlando: Harcourt, 1963) 91.

To adore God is to exalt Him in the highest while humbling ourselves to the lowest. That is our posture on Ash Wednesday: humble repentance. It’s the posture called for in the heart of the Lord’s Prayer. Father in Heaven, “forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us” (Matthew 6:12).

While the observance of Lent is optional, the three disciplines practiced in Lent are not. Thankfully in Matthew 6 (among other texts), the instructions of Jesus are clear. “When you give alms…when you pray…when you fast…” In our Lenten journey we will explore these texts and thoughts from saints through the centuries on them.

For now, let’s start with adoration and repentance. This is the first step to learning new habits linked to giving, prayer, and fasting. My prayer is that we will see “patches of Godlight” together. And I hope you like the new “Daily Meditations” image. It’s from the woods at Trinity College Bristol, UK, a place I’ve seen “patches of Godlight” many times.

“When it comes to choosing between my wants and the needs and wishes of others, it’s easy to prioritize the things that I desire. Thanks to sin, being selfish is our default mode. Selfishness is the “virus” that often prevents us from loving others with the same focus and intensity that we love ourselves…

Defeating sin requires the intervention of the Holy Spirit. The season of Lent, beginning Feb. 18, can be a time when we allow ourselves to be transformed from self-centered to other-centered people. My prayer is that I can get out of the way and allow the Great Physician to change me. I pray the same for you.”

Connie Fabor, editor of Christian Leader magazine, in the letter from the editor, January/February 2015.

I echo Connie’s prayer…that Lent will be a time when the Holy Spirit convicts each of us of sin and transforms us from self-centered to other-centered people. Over the next forty days (plus seven feast days and the seventh feast day is Easter) we will explore three disciplines: prayer, fasting, and giving to the poor. Our journey begins tomorrow.

“I have much more confidence in the charity which begins in the home and diverges into a large humanity, than in the worldwide philanthropy which begins at the outside of our horizon to converge into egotism.”

Anna Murphy Jameson (1797-1860), art historian, essayist, in Day’s Collacon compiled and arranged by Edward Parsons Day (New York: IPPO, 1884) 95.

Lent is a personal and communal journey that starts in each of us and permeates outward. For Jameson, practicing the disciplines of prayer, fasting, and sharing with the needy, are the kinds of things that should shape our lives and impact how we extend charity our neighbor who is right beside us. Perhaps this is a good framework for us to think about Lent.

Father, by your Holy Spirit, show each of us what it looks like to carve out time for communion with you (prayer), guide us to what we should remove from our lives for a season (fasting), and direct us in deploying Your resources in response to the needs of those around us (giving), so that all might see and know the love of Jesus. Amen.