Our Lent reflections will focus on our spiritual transformation in Christ as we journey with Jesus towards Good Friday and Easter this year. We will use the Beatitudes as an outline for this journey and will share a reflection for prayerful contemplation at the start of each week on one of these attitudes which Jesus said are the basis of God’s blessing!
We invite you to join us in this Lent journey as we seek to strengthen our faith and encourage each other at this very challenging time for all of us. We will meet in the chapel on Fridays between 12.00-13.00 to pray and reflect on each week’s reflections and you are invited to consider fasting and joining us for part of this time of fellowship and prayer each week during Lent.
“… for out of the ground you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” Genesis 3:19
We will begin this journey together with a reflection on our mortality which we are reminded of by the ashes used to mark the foreheads of penitents on Ash Wednesday. These remind us that as mortal beings we are dust and that to dust we shall return, as the priest recites over each person who is marked with the cross of ashes.
We do not like to think about our mortality as human beings, but the bible tells us our days are like the grass and flourishes like a flower of the field, but when the wind has passed over it, it is gone, and its place remembers it no more (Psalm 103: 15-16).
In the prayer of Moses recorded in Psalm 90, he says, the length of our days is seventy years- or eighty, if we have the strength; but their span is but trouble and sorrow, for they quickly pass, and we fly away (v10). Then he asks God to teach us to number our days so we can gain a heart of wisdom (v12). Reverence or the fear of God helps us to understand that our lives are a gift from a loving and gracious God and that the breath He gives us should not be taken for granted.
This became very clear to people during the Corona virus pandemic which ended so many lives prematurely and we need to express gratitude for each day God gives us in this time of pain and trauma caused by the death and destruction of life caused by the war here and so many other parts of the world!
Lord in this season of Lent teach me to number my days so that I may gain a heart of wisdom in the fear and reverence of God. I thank you for the gift of life you have given to me and my family, and I pray that we will use our time wisely to love and serve You and the communities we are part of. Restore us and heal us in Your great love and mercy we pray, Amen!
