A Reflection for Ash Wednesday

•March 5, 2014 • Leave a Comment

Ash Wednesday is a time for reflection, for confession, for honesty before God.  It is an opportunity also to seek God’s forgiveness – and receive it, deep into our heart and mind; to know that those things that trouble us, and those we are barely aware of but effect us deeply, can be dealt with by God; and to receive his peace.

Ashes are a way to show sorrow, a physical sign of an inner reality.

2014-02-27 12.12.10

Ashes mark penitence and mourning, an acknowledgement of and sorrow at our wrongdoing.

Daniel 9:2-4 (CEV)
Daniel Prays for the People

9 1-2 Daniel wrote:

Some years later, Darius the Mede, who was the son of Xerxes, had become king of Babylonia. And during his first year as king, I found out from studying the writings of the prophets that the Lord had said to Jeremiah, “Jerusalem will lie in ruins for seventy years.” 3-4 Then, to show my sorrow, I went without eating and dressed in sackcloth and sat in ashes. I confessed my sins and earnestly prayed to the Lord my God:

Our Lord, you are a great and fearsome God, and you faithfully keep your agreement with those who love and obey you.

We go through life.  We think we’re doing ok – not a bad job all things considered.  Or we don’t even have time to stop and think about it.  We are busy just surviving, getting to the next thing, trying to hold everything together.

But sometimes we are pulled up short.  We realise we have got something badly wrong, or just a little bit wrong, and we have to stop and think.  We need to apologise, put right what we have got wrong and receive forgiveness.  Often the hardest person to forgive is ourselves.

Ash Wednesday is a specific opportunity to do that thinking.  To take the time to purposely reflect before God on the reality that is our life.

Burning,
cleansing God,
I come before you today;
I want to take this time
to remember,
to honestly recall,
to examine my life
in your presence;
to ask my self
if I live up to all you ask of me,
day by day,
heartbeat by heartbeat,
in every corner of my life.

We know the Ten Commandments:

Exodus 20:1-17 (CEV)
The Ten Commandments

20 God said to the people of Israel:

2 I am the Lord your God, the one who brought you out of Egypt where you were slaves.

3 Do not worship any god except me.

4 Do not make idols that look like anything in the sky or on earth or in the ocean under the earth. 5 Don’t bow down and worship idols. I am the Lord your God, and I demand all your love. If you reject me, I will punish your families for three or four generations. 6 But if you love me and obey my laws, I will be kind to your families for thousands of generations.

7 Do not misuse my name. I am the Lord your God, and I will punish anyone who misuses my name.

8 Remember that the Sabbath Day belongs to me. 9 You have six days when you can do your work, 10 but the seventh day of each week belongs to me, your God. No one is to work on that day—not you, your children, your slaves, your animals, or the foreigners who live in your towns. 11 In six days I made the sky, the earth, the oceans, and everything in them, but on the seventh day I rested. That’s why I made the Sabbath a special day that belongs to me.

12 Respect your father and your mother, and you will live a long time in the land I am giving you.

13 Do not murder.

14 Be faithful in marriage.

15 Do not steal.

16 Do not tell lies about others.

17 Do not want anything that belongs to someone else. Don’t want anyone’s house, wife or husband, slaves, oxen, donkeys or anything else.

Read them slowly, thinking not just about the letter of them, but the spirit too.

Talk honestly to God about where you are with them and with him.  How have I lived out what God wants me to do?  How have I shown love, his love and mine, to those around me?  Not just the lovely people, but those that annoy me too?

I worship God, but are there other gods in my life?  Things I do rather than spend time with God or do what he requires of me?  Are there things I put in God’s place?

Am I free and easy with God’s name?  Do I do or say things that make me sound like I am closer to God than I am; or when I use his name to validate what I say, when it is actually my opinion that I have to say?

Do I make space, real space, for God, for myself and for those I love?  Or am I busy cramming my life with things that don’t really matter?

Do I truly respect those that I should?  Those who have experience and wisdom that I don’t?  Those who have sacrificed much for me and cared for me?

Of course I’ve never murdered anyone, but have I done and said things that have made people die on the inside?  Have I wished ill of people?

Am I faithful?  Do I always give the honour that is due?  Am I focussed, or do other things distract me?

I may not commit robbery, but do I look for short-cuts, loopholes or the cheapest rather than the best way?  Do I take others time, take them and all they offer for granted?  Am I looking for an easy ride through life, or willing to give as much as I get?

Am I honest in character?  Do I stretch the truth when it suits me?  Avoid the question?

Am I easily jealous, wanting what others have?  Thinking it will answer my problems?

There is so much I do that I shouldn’t do, and don’t do that I should…

Lord,
I come before you in shame,
in penitence,
to say that I am truly sorry.
My life is not what you would have it be,
I have not lived as the person you called me to be,
I have got some things very wrong
As I think of the ashes,
the dirt and the dust,
I see the darkness in my life;
I rub my hands in it
and see and feel the stain

Forgive me,
I pray.
Thank you
that you promise forgiveness
and give it freely.
This day may I go,
marked by you,
forgiven,
restored
and free
in and through
your love

Posted in bible, faith, forgiveness, God, lent, Religion, theology
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Forgiveness

•March 4, 2014 • 2 Comments

From the reality of knowing our lives, the only place to turn is God.  From an awareness of where we are, we can come to him and know his forgiveness, his safety, his strength.

How amazing it is
to know God’s forgiveness,
to know that the things we have got wrong
are wiped away,
cleaned down
by him.

We can tell him it all,
and it is done with.

Running away,
hiding,
trying to pretend
does us no good.
It saps energy,
weighs heavily
and we have to live with the truth.

Telling God
lifts the heavy weight,
takes away that grubby feeling
and protects us from doing it again.

May I not be afraid,
to look at my life,
consider its reality,
and bring it to God;
for only in that
comes the possibility
of a new way,a new hope,
a resting place in you.

Psalm 32 (CEV)

(A special psalm by David.)

The Joy of Forgiveness

32 Our God, you bless everyone
    whose sins you forgive
    and wipe away.
2 You bless them by saying,
    “You told me your sins,
without trying to hide them,
    and now I forgive you.”

3 Before I confessed my sins,
my bones felt limp,
    and I groaned all day long.
4 Night and day your hand
    weighed heavily on me,
    and my strength was gone
    as in the summer heat.

5 So I confessed my sins
    and told them all to you.
    I said, “I’ll tell the Lord
    each one of my sins.”
Then you forgave me
    and took away my guilt.

6 We worship you, Lord,
    and we should always pray
whenever we find out
    that we have sinned.
    Then we won’t be swept away
    by a raging flood.
7 You are my hiding place!
    You protect me from trouble,
and you put songs in my heart
    because you have saved me.

8 You said to me,
“I will point out the road
    that you should follow.
I will be your teacher
    and watch over you.
9 Don’t be stupid
    like horses and mules
    that must be led with ropes
    to make them obey.”

10 All kinds of troubles
    will strike the wicked,
    but your kindness shields those
    who trust you, Lord.
11 And so your good people
    should celebrate and shout.

Psalm 32

Posted in bible, faith, forgiveness, God, Lectionary, lent, Religion, theology
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It Was All Going So Well

•March 3, 2014 • 5 Comments

Dear Lord,

So far today I’ve done all right. I haven’t gossiped, haven’t lost my temper, haven’t been greedy, grumpy, nasty, selfish, or overindulgent. I’m very thankful for that.

But in a few minutes, Lord, I’m going to get out of bed, and from then on I’m probably going to need a lot more help. Amen

This is probably a familiar prayer to many of us.  Things seem to be going so well, and then…

Genesis 2:15-17; 3:1-7 (CEV)

15 The Lord God put the man in the Garden of Eden to take care of it and to look after it. 16 But the Lord told him, “You may eat fruit from any tree in the garden, 17 except the one that has the power to let you know the difference between right and wrong. If you eat any fruit from that tree, you will die before the day is over!”

The First Sin

3 The snake was sneakier than any of the other wild animals that the Lord God had made. One day it came to the woman and asked, “Did God tell you not to eat fruit from any tree in the garden?”

2 The woman answered, “God said we could eat fruit from any tree in the garden, 3 except the one in the middle. He told us not to eat fruit from that tree or even to touch it. If we do, we will die.”

4 “No, you won’t!” the snake replied. 5 “God understands what will happen on the day you eat fruit from that tree. You will see what you have done, and you will know the difference between right and wrong, just as God does.”

6 The woman stared at the fruit. It looked beautiful and tasty. She wanted the wisdom that it would give her, and she ate some of the fruit. Her husband was there with her, so she gave some to him, and he ate it too. 7 Right away they saw what they had done, and they realized they were naked. Then they sewed fig leaves together to make something to cover themselves.

Adam and Eve Downfall By Andrey Mironov (Own work)

God had made this beautiful world and left man and woman to care for it.  They were given great abundance to share, and just one rule.  Eat anything you like, apart from that tree.
But they couldn’t resist it.  They thought, with some help from the snake, that they knew better than God.  They were fully aware of what God had said to them, but they could not resist the temptation.

A great start to Lent.

Oscar Wilde famously said,

I can resist anything but temptation.

I wonder how true that is for me?  Returning to the prayer at the top, can I resist the temptation to gossip, lose my temper, greed, be grumpy, nasty, selfish, or overindulgent?  All equally things that God says are not good for me, for us – or for all those others whose lives we effect.

The temptations in life are many.   From this one apparently simple disobedience, life has spiralled out of control.  The knowledge of right and wrong, far from helping, has uncovered a whole category of wrongs that we have been more than happy to indulge in – ‘Just this one’, ‘No one will know’, ‘What difference will it make?’.  But the difference it makes may be huge.  We may not see it or realize it, but giving in to temptation has repercussions.  It is not for no reason that the Lord’s Prayer contains the line,

Lead us not into temptation.

Perhaps for this lent, that needs to be the focus.  To take more time.  To pause and reflect before I act.  Is what I am about to do good and helpful, or am I perhaps giving in to temptation?  Maybe I can live a purposeful lent.  Instead of giving up sweets or some other culinary indulgence, can I give up giving in to those actions that are soooooo tempting; that I may make it beyond getting up before I have responded badly to something or someone.  And for that I need God’s help.

So many things Lord,
that I know I shouldn’t do,
that are not what you ask of me,
good for me,
or for those around me.
Yet often
I succumb,
follow what I want,
my natural instincts,
or habits.

Forgive me
when I get things wrong,
purposefully choose what I want,
think I know better
or speak and do without thinking.

Lord,
I want to live your ways,
and I need your help.
Help me to recognise temptation
for what it is,
a distraction from you
and what you ask of me.
Help me,
intentionally,
to pause
and consider what I do,
that I will not give in
to temptation.

Whenever I think of temptation, I can never resist this song (oops that didn’t last long did it!)

Posted in bible, faith, forgiveness, God, Lectionary, lent, Religion, theology
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