We run our website the way we wished the whole internet worked: we provide high quality original content with no ads. We are funded solely by your direct support. Please consider supporting this project.
A Blessing for Ash Wednesday
Sarah (Rosenau) Korf via Compfight
For those of you observing the Lenten season (and for those of you who are not), we thought we would share this poem by Jan Richardson.
Rend Your Heart
A Blessing for Ash Wednesday
To receive this blessing,
all you have to do
is let your heart break.
Let it crack open.
Let it fall apart
so that you can see
its secret chambers,
the hidden spaces
where you have hesitated
to go.
Your entire life
is here, inscribed whole
upon your heart’s walls:
every path taken
or left behind,
every face you turned toward
or turned away,
every word spoken in love
or in rage,
every line of your life
you would prefer to leave
in shadow,
every story that shimmers
with treasures known
and those you have yet
to find.
It could take you days
to wander these rooms.
Forty, at least.
And so let this be
a season for wandering
for trusting the breaking
for tracing the tear
that will return you
to the One who waits
who watches
who works within
the rending
to make your heart
whole.
Category: General
Tags: Ash Wednesday, Easter, Jan Richardson, Lent, Prayer, Repentance
Related Reading
Podcast: Should We Expose Santa and the Easter Bunny as Frauds to Our Kids?
Greg pulls back the curtain on holiday fraud in this disenchanting roller coaster of an episode. http://traffic.libsyn.com/askgregboyd/Episode_0297.mp3
On Obedience as Spiritual Warfare (podcast)
In this episode Greg talks about the role of obedience in Spiritual Warfare. Episode 33 http://traffic.libsyn.com/askgregboyd/Episode_0033.mp3
Hearing and Responding to God: Part 6
Greg has a couple additional thoughts about this topic so here’s part 6 and we’ll post part 7 tomorrow. Today, Greg discusses a way for us to discern the will of God. You can view the previous videos here, here, here, here, and here. Good stuff!
Do You Need to Starve a Little?
Sarah (Rosenau) Korf via Compfight Here’s a challenging reflection on Ash Wednesday and the beginning of Lent by Kurt Willems. He notes that Lent is a season where we choose to starve ourselves of our little idols in order to join Jesus in the desert, and he lists several benefits of this particular kind of…
Do My Prayers Matter?
We talked about the risk God took in creating the world as he did (see previous post). The choices made by humans and spiritual agents influence what transpires in history. This sets the stage for an understanding of how our prayers have influence on what actually happens in the world. To make this point, I…