Lenten Scripture Reflection | Sunday: Psalm 6; Jeremiah 51.1-33; James 4

From: James Flaherty

A few thoughts for the beginning of Lent:

If you’re looking for a way into the season, or a sobering jolt, consider these words:
"Submit yourselves to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you of two minds. Begin to lament, to mourn, to weep. Let your laughter be turned into mourning and your joy into dejection. Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you." (James 4: 7-10)

"Do you not know," the writer of James asks, "that to be a lover of the world means enmity with God?" 
A full, frightening picture of enmity with God comes through Jeremiah 51: 1-26, and it's worth letting the flames graze your own face, so to speak, as you confess and reckon with your "two-mindedness": "I will stretch forth my hand against you [i.e., Babylon], roll you down over the cliffs, and make you a burned mountain. They will not take from you a cornerstone, or a foundation stone. Ruins forever shall you be, says the Lord." 

But here's the encouragement for those who persevere:
"Put away all filth and evil excess and humbly welcome the word that has been planted in you and is able to save your souls. Be doers of the word and not hearers only, deluding yourselves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks at his own face in a mirror. He sees himself, then goes off and promptly forgets what he looks life. But the one who peers into the perfect law of freedom and perseveres, and is not a hearer who forgets but a doer who acts, such a one shall be blessed in what he does." James 1:18-21.

I live in Jamaica Plain with my family.

Lenten Scripture Reflection | Saturday: Psalm 5; Jeremiah 50.29-46; James 3

From: Hannah Bansil

Every morning of my childhood, over the breakfast oatmeal, my family memorized the Catechism for Young Children. Many of these simple question and response pairs still come to mind as I go about my day. In the season of Lent the one I think about most often is the question ‘What is it to repent?’ and its answer ‘To be sorry for sin and to hate and forsake it because it is displeasing to God.’

Such a simple phrase but with a deeply complex understanding of our motivations and actions. At times in my life I have struggled to be sorry for my sin. I have loved my sin and been unwilling to name it as sin at all. At other times I have felt a loathing for my sin, a deep repulsion with my own actions but a total inability to break the patterns that held me. But I think that the power in the phrase really lies in it’s second half ‘because it is displeasing to God.’ 

The psalmist says “For you are not a God who delights in wickedness; evil may not dwell with you.” I often see lent as a bit of a self-betterment remodeling project, a time to get rid of mental clutter or bad habits and move toward ‘living my best life’, to use the parlance of our time. But to repent isn’t to rid myself of the things that displease me but to examine my heart for the things that displease God. Jonathan Edwards puts it like this. “Love to God tends to an abhorrence of sin against God, and so to our being humbled before him for it. So much as anything is loved, so much will its contrary be hated; therefore so much as anyone loves God, so much will they have an abhorrence of sin against God; and having an abhorrence of sin against God will tend to our abhorring ourselves for it, and so humbling ourselves for it before God.”

My prayer this lent is for a growing love to God and a resulting hatred of all that displeases him.

I live in JP with my husband Amit and a very wide eyed eight month old baby. I am always up for coffee or a conversation about books.

Lenten Scripture Reflection | Friday: Psalms 3-4; Jeremiah 50.1-28; James 2

From: Dan Roge

There’s a powerful theme throughout the story of God that has started to lose it’s punchiness for me – the idea of strength abiding within weakness. As I head further into my 30s, weakness has lost its luster. I often feel weak and, if given the choice, I would gladly replace that feeling with strength ten times out of ten. Today’s Psalm reading refreshed my vision, though. In Psalm 4, I see a person who has stopped running from their weakness, and has instead found a home within it.

The verse that stuck out to me was verse 5:

Offer the sacrifices of righteousness, 
And trust in the Lord.

In this verse, I see a person who has resigned themselves to their role. There are a million outcomes that the writer can’t manage throughout the day, but one supposes that she or he can “offer the sacrifices of righteousness”, and trust the Lord with the outcomes side of the equation. As a generally tired person these days, I’m drawn to the Gospel invitation to acknowledge where my capabilities end. What is difficult is trusting in the Lord’s ability (or willingness) to make up the difference. Here’s the good news though: regardless of whether I trust that he can or will make up the difference, the fact remains that, if I’m honest with myself, I still can’t manage outcomes. So with that in mind, I might as well watch to see what happens after I pass God the baton.

The end of the Psalm offers a peek into how someone who has embraced their limitations tends to feel at the end of a day:

In peace I will both lie down and sleep, 
For Thou alone, O Lord, dost make me to dwell in safety. 

My hope is that, by taking time to embrace my own limitations this Lenten season, I might be able to more frequently close my day praying like the Psalmist has closed his.

My name is Dan Roge, I’m a designer living in JP. I’m married to Genevieve Roge, and dad of James Roge. I love spending time in the woods, I’m not very competitive, I have a hard time with sad stories, and generally tend to read one whole article from The New Yorker every week.