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The Wisdom40 Challenge
I invite you, your church, and your family to join me in the #Wisdom40Challenge—something that I think will be fun, edifying, and maybe a little wisdom-producing. Here’s how it will work.
Prayers for Lent
Holy Spirit, Lead us into the wilderness: away from the sounds and furies, away from our fidgety fingers and swipe/tap temptations, away from the allures of power and pleasure and "likes" and winning. Help us to walk in the way of weakness, the way of the cross, the way of ashes and hunger and weeping for the world.
12 Films for Lent
A few years ago I thought it would an interesting challenge to think of films that reflected the heart of the season of Advent. You can see that list of “10 Films for Advent” here. But what about Lent? What makes a film “Lenten”? As I thought about it, I first thought of images: films of desert, spartan landscapes; faces of lament and suffering; gray and drab color palettes. Then I thought of tone: somber, contemplative, quiet, yet with a glimmer of hope or a moment of catharsis. Finally I thought of themes: suffering, isolation, hunger, penance, hope. I came up with the list below (in alphabetical order).
The Lent Project
I've been very honored to be a part of the initiatives coming out of the new Biola University Center for Christianity, Culture & the Arts, which launched at Biola back in September.
Ash Wednesday Prayer Requests
Lord, bring us to our knees. Quiet our hearts. Away from the onslaught of screens and tweets and texts, focus our eyes on you. Abide in our perceptions, as we taste and see and hear that you are good. In the stillness of dusk, on ever lengthening days; serenaded by car horns, engines, buzzing iPhones, birds, distant planes, and the mystical fugues of February vespers... speak to us oh God.
Lenten Prayer Requests
Lord, bring us to our knees. Quiet our hearts.
Away from the onslaught of screens and tweets and texts, focus our eyes on you.
Abide in our perceptions, as we taste and see and hear that you are good.
Lent, Self-Denial, Life, Bonhoeffer
Wednesday is Ash Wednesday. One of my favorite days on the liturgical calendar. I plan to attend a wonderfully solemn church service Wednesday night, receive the ash cross on my forehead, and kick off my as-yet-determined Lenten "give up" fast.
Lenten Promises to Keep
The middle of Lent. 17 more days until Easter. It’s a time of waiting, anticipation, sadness and hope. It’s wearying and rejuvenating in awkward intervals. It's Psalm 88 one minute and 89 the next.It’s life.
Coffee and Easter
To lack a beautiful pleasure like coffee for six out of seven days is actually not the worst thing in life. Having six days of missing goodness is always better than six days full of heartbreak or sadness. I’d rather be without a good than with a bad. But in life there’s always a mix.
The N.T. Wright Stuff
Things feel rather hopeless these days for a lot of people. The economy is horrific, many are out of work, the weight of existence bears down in customary fashion... And yet in this period of Lent--as Christians quietly prepare themselves for the remembrances that are Good Friday and Easter, hope seems to break through the bleak landscape. Christ is hope; Christianity is, if it is anything, a belief in hope. So often we Christians get sidetracked and come across as dour, judgmental, "get me out of this earth and take me to heaven" downers... which is why more and more people (especially young people) just tune it all out. Why believe in a religion that forsakes this world and looks forward to its demise and an otherworldly heaven? Is not this world worth anything? Why was it even created?
Ashes, Ashes, We All Fall Down
The stakes are high. We cannot look flippantly on a human life—even strangers or enemies or the annoying people who sing too loudly and demonstratively in church. Whether we like it or not, all of these people are holy beings. As Lewis reminds us, “Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbor is the holiest object presented to your senses."