How’s Your Lent Going?

If you are keeping track, we’re just a little over halfway through the 40 days of Lent (not counting the Sundays!).  Lent means “Spring” and for the first few weeks that title fit perfectly, but last week, winter reminded us of its hold on us yet.

One of the things that I decided to “take on” rather than “give up” during this Lenten Season is to pray for the people of Ukraine.  So each day I’ve tried to think about what it must be like to have your country under siege.  Every day bombs and missiles are launched over your country; every day you hear of war atrocities; every day more people die on both sides of the conflict.

But what do the people of Ukraine and Russia pray for?  Peace, for sure, but then what?

Mark Twain’s famous War Prayer reminds us of those praying on both sides:

God’s servant and yours has prayed his prayer. Has he paused and taken thought? Is it one prayer? No, it is two — one uttered, the other not. Both have reached the ear of Him Who heareth all supplications, the spoken and the unspoken. Ponder this — keep it in mind. If you would beseech a blessing upon yourself, beware! lest without intent you invoke a curse upon a neighbor at the same time. If you pray for the blessing of rain upon your crop which needs it, by that act you are possibly praying for a curse upon some neighbor’s crop which may not need rain and can be injured by it.

For me, Lent is like trying to pray during a time of war. It’s never simple. It always has lots of different levels and paradoxes. And it wears on me.

Yes, I take 40 days to journey to the cross.  But I already know what happens there.  Why do I want to go back? Why do I need to go back?

And yet I continue to make my way.  Full of sin and mixed motives, I make my way once again to the cross.  And there I find myself unworthy once again of all the love that is flowing my way.

Thanks be to God in Jesus Christ!

Pastor John D. Morris