[re]imagine Lent: 4/3/2023
We encourage you to sign up for the 40-40-40 Lenten Challenge, a challenge with our partner Southeastern Iowa Synod to participate in Lenten practices, including these daily devotions. Just signing up counts as participation! More info here.
“[Thus says the Lord,] “I am the Lord, I have called you in righteousness, I have taken you by the hand and kept you; I have given you as a covenant to the people, a light to the nations, to open the eyes that are blind, to bring out the prisoners from the dungeon, from the prison those who sit in darkness. I am the Lord, that is my name; my glory I give to no other, nor my praise to idols. See, the former things have come to pass, and new things I now declare; before they spring forth, I tell you of them.””
What is this week all for? Many of us look at the weekly schedule and see… so many things, and a few worship services on top of them. It can sometimes seem like it’s a bit overkill to do these services. We hear the story on Sunday, then we hear the story on Thursday, and again on Friday, and maybe on Saturday before we even get to Easter Sunday.
Yet this is the week. THE week which celebrates God’s unrelenting love, Christ’s solemn unity with humanity and unspeakable suffering, and the Holy Spirit’s persistent gentleness, breathing life again.
And for what? So that you might be saved, totally released from the burdens that weigh you down, from the shame and guilt that is heaped upon you from within and without. So that, forgiven of your sins, you might live in God’s grace, forgiving others. This is God’s covenant to the world.
It took God doing a totally new thing – sending God’s own self to enter wholly into humanity. And God continues to do new things, saving you in new ways, freeing you to new things, each time as a new way for you, for our church, to reach new people, and telling them that they, too, are so loved that God’s gift of grace is for them.
This Monday of Holy Week, I invite you to consider how many ways God has reached you with salvation and to give thanks for this amazing gift.
Prayer
O God, your Son chose the path that led to pain before joy and to the cross before glory. Plant his cross in our hearts, so that in its power and love we may come at last to joy and glory, through Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.
Amen.
Prayer of the day from ELW Monday in Holy Week
Week Five Devotions by Rev. Erika Uthe, uthe@seiasynod.org