qāvâ

Opening Prayer: “Wait for the Lord; be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord.” (Ps. 27:14)

Scripture: Psalm 27:13-14

Journal: How have waiting and transformation been linked in your experience?  Where and how are you waiting for change in your life or your heart?  What does waiting for the Lord, that change, look like?  Will you wait?

Reflection: “Wait (qāvâ) for the Lord; be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord.” (Psalm 27:14)

We cannot force or manipulate or contrive our way into transformation, it is only something that can be done to us.  In other words, we cannot work for it, we must wait for it—which drives us crazy.

In the words of a wise saint: “Waiting is the missing link in the transformation process.”  No wonder so few of us experience real and lasting change; we hate to wait.  We are terrible at it.  We want to be in control of the process, but we aren’t.  All we can really do is make time and space for transformation to occur, the rest is up to the Spirit of God, who likes to do things in his own time and in his own way.

Maybe that’s why we need to be strong and take heart in the waiting, lest we get impatient and try to take matters into our own hands.  Because no matter how hard we try, we can’t make ourselves be born, only God can do that.

Pray

Closing Prayer: Stay with God!  Take heart.  Don’t quit.  I’ll say it again: Stay with God.  (Ps. 27:14, MSG)

die and become

Opening Prayer: O Lord, forgive us for hiding and cowering and covering.  Give us the courage to ask you to peel away all of our self-protective layers, so that we can become exactly who and what you created us to be.  For there is no way we can become that unless we are willing to die to all that is false within us.  Amen.

Scripture: Genesis 3:8-10

Journal: How are you still hiding and covering?  What is underneath all of the layers of false beliefs and patterns and accumulated facades?  Will you let go of them and allow God to show you who you really are?

Reflection:

     die and become

dragon skins and fig leaves

myers-briggs profiles

and enneagram numbers

they are all just the same thing

cherished illusions

survival strategies

manufactured selves

protective coverings

subtle creations

of our own deepest

fears and needs

camouflage

costumes

disguises

that is until

we crack open the shell

let go of the pretense

and leave the husk behind

it takes great courage to do so

because it feels like our death

which in some ways it really is

but to continue to live falsely

is a worse fate even still

for only when we let go

of all that is false

will we be truly free

for God to show us

who we really are

Prayer

Closing Prayer: O Lord, have mercy on us.  The Fall was far more drastic and dramatic and devastating than we can ever fully know.  Apart from a work of your Spirit, all we will ever be doing is peeling away the accumulated layers of illusion and falsehood.  Help us, O Lord, to have the courage to turn to you, to let go of all of our false patterns, and to allow you to show us who we really are.  Only you can do that.  Amen.

wait

Opening Prayer: I wait for the Lord, my soul waits, and in his word I put my hope.  My soul waits for the Lord more than watchmen wait for the morning, more than watchmen wait for the morning.  (Psalm 130:5-6)

Scripture: Psalm 130:5-6

Journal: What does waiting for the Lord look like in your life?  What do you think God wants it to look like?

Reflection: “I wait for the Lord, my soul waits, and in his word I put my hope.” (Psalm 130:5)

Until we learn how to “wait for the Lord,” there can never really be any real hope of genuine transformation, because we will constantly be trying to do it ourselves. We cannot manufacture or manipulate the process of holiness.  We must learn how to stop trying to make things happen and learn how to let things happen.  Until we stop trying to force or manipulate or control the process, we are destined for a life of frustration, futility, and failure.  Only God can transform, and only when we learn what it means to “wait for the Lord” can transformation become a real possibility for us.

Pray

Closing Prayer: Forgive me, O Lord, when I fail to wait for you; when I try to make things happen rather than letting them happen; when I try to force and control and manipulate things—or speed them up—rather than allowing them to unfold at your speed.  Help me to learn what it means to truly wait for you.  Amen.

desperation

Opening Prayer: Lord Jesus, help us to realize that our desperation is a good thing, for it is what makes us reach out for you.

Scripture: Mark 5:25-34

Journal: What is your level of desperation these days?  How is that drawing you to Jesus?

Reflection: “I miss the desperation.  It drew me to Jesus in such a beautiful way,” said a dear friend who went through a difficult battle with infertility before her first child was born.  And although she was extraordinarily grateful for the birth of each of her three children, she also recognized something really beautiful about life with God: our desperation was meant to draw us to him.

The season of Lent is an invitation to transformation; a long, hard journey through our own desperation and need into a place of God’s healing and life.  Why does it have to be so long and so hard?  Because quick fixes are seldom best.  Because genuine transformation is usually the result of significant pain and struggle.  Because God is more concerned with our being holy, than he is our being comfortable. 

It is in our desperation that he shows up in a way that lets us know he is up to something so much bigger and so much deeper and so much more beautiful than we ever imagined.  It is only in our helplessness that we are able to find real help.  It is only in our powerlessness that we are able to experience real power.  And it is only in our desperation that we are able to undergo real transformation.  In fact, desperation creates some of the very best soil for God to grow his life in us.  Thus, desperation is not something to be avoided at all costs, but something to be embraced, and even nurtured.  Lent is the season where God grows our desperation and makes us ready for resurrection.

“I discovered that in the spiritual life,” writes Sue Monk Kidd, “the long way round is the saving way.  It isn’t the quick and easy religion we’re accustomed to.  It’s deep and difficult—a way that leads into the vortex of the soul where we touch God’s transformative powers.”  So come, bring your brokenness and your desperation, and he will bring his healing and his love.

Prayer

Closing Prayer: Let my desperation, Lord Jesus, cause me to work my way through the crowd and reach out for the hem of your robes.  For if we can only touch you, we will be healed.  Amen.

 

our father

Opening Prayer: O God, more than anything else you want us to know you as our Father.  Not a distant, disinterested, stern, or angry father, but the Father we always dreamt about in our wildest imaginations.  A Father that loving and strong, tender and true, present and attentive.  That is the kind of Father you are, and we are so grateful to be your children.

Scripture: Matthew 6:5-13

Journal: What does the image of God as your Father stir up in you today?  How does it affect the way you pray?  How could it?

Reflection: “Our Father in heaven.” (Matthew 6:9) The guiding image for prayer, Jesus tells us, is that of God as “Our Father.”  It is an image of strong, tender, and unfailing love.  Thus, our Father-God has a special affection for the sound of our voice; it brings him deep joy and gladness.  He longs for us to be near to him so he can breathe in our scent, delight over our features, run his hands through our hair, and press his lips to our cheeks.  It seems like that alone would be enough reason for us to want to pray.

Pray

Closing Prayer: Our Father in heaven.  Thank you that that’s who you are!  Amen.

immediately

Opening Prayer: Lord Jesus, help me to want what is best, rather than merely what is quickest and easiest.  Forgive me for always wanting things immediately, when watching and waiting and persevering produces so much more fruit in me.

Scripture: Mark 5:24-34

Journal: Where and how are you demanding quick and easy, rather than willingly enduring long and hard and good?

Reflection: “Immediately her bleeding stopped and she felt in her body that she had been freed from her suffering.” (Mark 5:29)

We want things immediately, don’t we?  We want them as quickly and as easily—and as painlessly—as possible.  Unfortunately, the very best things in life, particularly in the spiritual life, rarely work that way; they take time.  They are often a part of a long, hard process that is necessary for our becoming.  Thus, while immediately might seem preferable, it is seldom best.

So when we run across the word “immediately” in a passage like Mark 5, it can create a bit of a false narrative if we are not careful.  A narrative in which we begin to believe that all healing must happen immediately, which fails to recognize that this particular healing had been twelve years in the making.  The bleeding woman, it seems, had to make a twelve-year journey “to the end of herself” before she was desperate enough to reach out for the healing touch of Jesus.  Something of great value was going on during those twelve years of exasperation and frustration.  God was up to something much deeper and much bigger and much more beautiful than she could imagine.  A short-cut would have circumvented that possibility altogether.

And so it is with each of us.  All too often we want our “healing” to happen immediately, as well.  We want to avoid the long and the hard.  The only problem is that when we desire what is easiest over what is best, we open ourselves up to the possibility that we might miss a much deeper work that God is trying to do.

Prayer

Closing Prayer: Forgive us, Lord Jesus, when we demand that you act according to our timetable.  Forgive us when we accuse you of not caring, or of being absent, because you have failed to act immediately.  Help us, O Lord, to know that you are always about doing a deeper work.  You are more interested in our becoming than you are in our being comfortable.  Thank you for that.  Amen.