During Lent, there will be 8 Lenten meditations:  Ash Wednesday; the six Sundays of Lent; and Good Friday.  Each one will be added the week prior to the date.  Just scroll down the page until you come to the meditation for that week.

ASH WEDNESDAY - February 17, 2010

LENTEN GARDENS

"FAR FROM EDEN"

Gardens can be a source of joy.  They can also be a source of disappointment.  You can relax and rest in a garden.  You can also strain muscles and grow weary under a hot sun.  Gardens provide both food for our bodies and beauty for our souls.

Lent can be a gardening time.  Coming as spring draws near, it offers an opportunity for thinking how our lives can be more productive and satisfying.  We have come a long way from an Advent / Christmas season's of hope and promise to a far different place.  This is a time for "digging in," because it takes work to reap a rich harvest.

As winter snow melts and freezing temperatures moderate, fields and gardens often look pretty barren and bleak.  Stubble and skeletons of leaves provide only memories of growing things.  In our personal lives, we may feel that we have come a long way from the Garden of Eden.  The ashes of Ash Wednesday symbolize some of this deadness -- lack of life and vitality.

It is time to go to work in our personal gardens.  One of the wonderful things about faith is its reminder that we can always make a fresh start.  Human lives ae really like perennials.  They may look dead in wintertime, but thee is life within them.  The sun of God's wisdom quickens us.  The showers of God's love start our life juices flowing.

Whatever our age or position in life, growth is possible.  We need to weed out those things that hinder us, that absorbs our time and energies, but are not productive.  Loosen up the soil around us, so that we are open to receive the goodness of God's providence.  Don't let the Lenten Season just happen!  Use it for starting new growth and letting God nourish your spirit!

FIRST SUNDAY OF LENT - February 21, 2010

LENTEN GARDENS

"THE WORLD IS GOD'S GARDEN"

The Bible tells us that human life began in a garden.  With all the arguments about the nature of God's creating, we often miss the rich symbolism of the creation story.  God intends for our world to be like a beautiful garden.  God as provided everything that is needed for the world's people to be nourished in body and spirit.  We also have been given the wisdom to develop ways for this to happen.

According to the story, Adam and Eve disobeyed God's instructions to them and ate forbidden fruit.  How well this symbolizes the greed, which now hinders a fair distribution of the earth's resources!  Wealty people live in mansions, while the poor live in makeshift hovels.  Well endowed nations waste water resources and defile rivers, while poorer countries have people suffering from polluted wells and streams.  Are the wealthy eating "forbidden fruit"?  A laborer "is worthy of his hire," but what about those, who never have an opportunity to labor for a decent wage and earn enough to live comfortably?

Jesus spoke frequently on behalf of the poor.  What is more, Paul wrote that "Jesus Christ, though he was rich, yet for your sake be became poor, so that by his poverty you might become rich."  (2 Corinthians 8:9)  If we are to observe Lent properly, may this not be a time for consideirng how we can restore balance in God's garden?  This would include not only being generous in what we give to help others, but also reviewing what we hold as priorities in our lives.  What do we really treasure?  Do we choose things of genuine value or tokens of wealth and privlege?

God's garden is a place for all of the world's people.  If we are to regain the beauty and peace God intended, it is going to require a greater willingness to share.  We are called to give to others both material things and the mutual love and acceptance that can make the world a family.

SECOND SUNDAY OF LENT - February 28, 2010

LENTEN GARDENS

"WHAT KIND OF SOIL?"

One of Jesus' parables seems almost tailor-made for Lent.  It is about gardening.  Gardeners know that seeds grow better in some spots than in others.  In the same way, Lent can be a very productive time for some people, while others gain little from it.  The parable suggests some reasons for this.

Jesus describes how a man went out to plan his field. (see Mark 4:1-9).  Some of this seed fell on the road where birds came and ate it.  Other seed fell amidst stones; even if it started to sprout, ti soon withered and ded.  Some feel into decent soil, but thorn plants crowded the good ones out.  Other seed fell on fertile ground and produced a rewarding harvest.

Approaching the Lenten season, we often have our appointment books already full and our minds are cluttered.  Unless we make a special effort, thoughts of enriching our inner life and nourishing our spirits meet the same fate as the seeds.  Seed on the road or among thorns loses out because of our busyness.  Stony soil comes when we fail to heed our inner longing for richer life or do not give it priority.  How do we keep this from happening, so Lent can me a difference?

One essential is the simple but problematic matter of "time," - creative thinking time.  Many people have found that taking fifteen minutes for quiet reflection during the work day makes the remaining time more productive.  We work not harder - but smarter.  In gardening terms, put down the hoe for a few moments and enjoy the beauty.  A second essential is "hopeful visioning."  What results are we hoping for in our lives?  What do we most want to reap from our life's labors?

Jesus came that we might have abundant life.  It has been said that "Today is the first day of the rest of your life.  Perhaps this year's Lenten season can be the beginning of a new style of life -- purposeful life of productivity and beauty.

. FOURTH SUNDAY OF LENT - March 14, 2010

LENTEN GARDENS

"The Good and the Bad"

As one who treasured the wonders of God's creation, Jesus told a story that reflects the nature of life.  A man planted wheat, good seed -- did everything right -- but he had an enemy who wished him harm.  The enemy came and planted weeds amidst the wheat.  Both grain and weeds grew together and soon the man's servants discovered what had happened.  They might have tried to pull the weeds out, but the landowner stopped them, for fear that the whole crop might be lost. (Matthew 13:24-30)

Fortunately, most of us do not have this kind of enemy.  Or do we?  In the process of trying to make our lives all that they can be, we run into a lot of oppostion.  It comes in the evils and shallow values that are all around us, greed and self-seeking, even natural problems like sickness and danger.  The tares (weeds) of scripture were poisonous grasses tht looked a lot like grain as they were growing, but were easily distinguished when fully grown.  Money, social position and power look good and are enticing, but we lose out, when they become goals in themselves and lure us away from life's lasting treasures.

What do we do, if and when we discover that some of these tares threaten to take over our lives?  Whether they are simply life's natural problems like illness or are more virulent societal evils like greed, dishonesty, or gossip, how do we live creatively?  Those things that we are able to weed out surely should go.  However, this parable warns us against spending our time fretting about them and dealing only with the weeds.

We need to use our time and major efforts for cultivating what is good.  All of us come to realize that life is not perfect.  We are not in the Garden of Eden.  But resist the serpent of skepticism, which threatens to take away the good that we have.  Reap the good things that sill grow in our lives, showing the evil and the bad that they cannot dominate us.

THIRD SUNDAY OF LENT - March 7, 2010

LENTEN GARDENS

"Great Expectations"

In thinking about gardens during the Lenten season, we come to a parable of Jesus that concerns not a whole garden but one plant within it.  Leave plenty of room for this plant!  Its seeds are tiny, but the plant can grow, in old terms, "to the height of a horse and rider."  It is of course, the mustard seed, an herb, a condiment, seasoning that adds spice to life.  Jesus said, "If you have faith as a grain of mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, 'Move from here' and it will do so (Matthew 17:20).  He also uses this symbol for the growth of his whole mission:  "The Kingdom of heaven is like a grain of mustard seed - smallest of all seeds, but when it grow it becomes a tree and birds make nests in its branches" (Matthew 13:31-32).

Creative use of the season of Lent can be like planting a mustard seed.  Each of us has so much more potential than we ever realize and Lent is a time for considering how we can live more fully.  It might be said that Jesus is the only person in history, who lived up to his full potential.  Even if we cannot measure up to his example, his life is a wonderful guide for us in terms of trust in God, understanding of life's meaning and heartfelt compassion for those around us.

But Lent is also a time when the Church, Christ's worldwide family, celebrates.  Christ's followers are called to bring the reign of God into fullfillment.  Jesus did not come simply for his twelve disciples or even for the hundreds, who heard him preach on a hillside.  His message and his life are the mustard seed that can grow and spread throughout the earth.  If individual faith and practive are often short of our potential, so is the vision and outreach of Christ's church.  We have "a story to tell to the nations."  It is not only a story of Jesus, but an insight into the abundant life God offers us.  Through faith and through following in the way Jesus had led, our world could become so much greater.  Lent calls us to great expectations both for ourselves and for our world.

 FIFTH SUNDAY OF LENT - March 21, 2010

LENTEN GARDENS

"God's Surprising Generosity"

A vineyard is a different kind of garden.  You do not need to worry about planting seeds, because vines can be many years old.  There is work to be done, though.  Vines need to be pruned.  Soil around them needs to be loosened and weeds cleared away.  When harvent time comes, more helpers are needed.  Owners of large vineyards hire workers to do these tasks.

Jesus told a story about one such owner, who was surprisingly generous (Matthew 20:1-16).  He went out early in the morning to hire laborers and agreed to give them the usual day's pay.  Every three hours during the day he went out again and hire more men. Then, a surprising thing happened.  The latecomers received a full day's pay, even though they had worked only a short time.  So did those who came at noon.  When the early hires came, they expected to be paid more.  Hadn't they earned it?  But they received only the amount originally agreed to.  Was that fair?

Jesus is illuminating a different kind of economics.  The latecomers had not earned the full pay but they were people in need.  The owner saw them not as "hired hand" but as human beings.  they had the same needs as the others.

God is like that vineyard owner.  We shortchange God, if we think that faith is only a system for earning our way in life, trying to do enough good to make up for the bad.  With amazing grace, God forgives and extends a wonderful acceptance to all.  Some people may feel that they deserve more, but God acts with surprising generosity.  Jesus invites all to come to him.

We should not take advantage of God's love.  It is better to live faithfully throughout our lives.  The early workers spent the day working, but assured of receiving the income they needed.  The latecomers spent most of the day worrying about having food to put on their table.  God wants us all to be nourished and to know life's rewards.

PALM / PASSION SUNDAY - March 28, 2010

LENTEN GARDENS

"Gardens of Affirmation and Denial"

Palm / Passion Sunday comes at the beginning of a week known as Passiontide or Holy Week.  Passion, which is intense emotion, can be love or suffering, joy or sorrow.  In the last week that leads up to Easter, Jesus and his followers experience them all.

Two gardens symbolize the contrast that Passiontide or Holy Week brings.  On Palm / Passion Sunday we find ourselves not actually in a garden but on a road.  We know that palm trees grew nearby, though, because people took palm branches, cut from the field and scattered them before Jesus.  Filled with joy at this triumphal entry into the city, they shouted, "Hosanna!  Blessed is the King, who comes in the name of the Lord."  Joy, hope, victory, and a sense of fulfillment filled the hearts of all who hailed him.

Fast forward to another garden on Maundy Thursday night, the garden of the high priest, to whom Jesus had been taken after his arrest by the Roman authorities.  It was there tht Peter, in anquish over what had happened and fearful of the authorities, denied even knowing Jesus and later went out and wept bitterly.  He and the other disciples came the full circle from delight to despair.

Life brings us all kinds of gardens and all kinds of experiences.  Though we walk with Jesus, there is no guarantee that we will have an easy time of it.  Life is not "a rose garden."  It makes a difference, though, to know that God in Christ is near.  Somehow this always gives us hope.  The One who "walked this lonesome valley" makes us less lonesome.  He reminds us of the Psalmist's words and that we walk not "in" the valley of the shadow of death, but "through" it.  God's rod and staff comfort us.

These two Passiontide / Holy Week gardens call us to live life to the fullest, enjoying the wonderful things it has to offer and not despairing when the going is hard.  When duty, or love, calls for risk or danger, dare to face it and move ahead.  Trust in the one who is our constant companion.

GOOD FRIDAY - APRIL 2, 2010

LENTEN GARDENS

"How Near Was God?"

In the Garden of Eden, God seemed to talk with Adam as easily as a helpful neighbor might talk over a backyard fence (except that there were no fences).  In the Garden of Gethsemane the night before Jesus' crucifixion, the scene was very different.  Peace and expectation had given way to anxiety and sorrow.  Yet, Jesus knelt there and talked with God about what lay ahead.  Golgotha, or Calvary, where three crosses would later stand, was no garden; it was a desolate place, where a feeling of death was in the air.  Yet, even while dying on the cross, Jesus talked with God.

One of the hardest things about suffering is the feeling of aloneness.  To be sure, no one else can feel our pain, but if someone is near, the suffering is shared and we feel comforted.  In Gethsemane, Jesus wanted that comfort and sharing, but his disciples fell asleep.  They did not understand what he was about to face.  On the cross, Jesus felt alone and cried out, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"  But at the end he said, "Father, into your hands I commit my spirit."

These garden experiences remind us that God is never apart from us, whatever our position or need may be.  We may feel alone, and our problems are very real, but God is there to help us face them creatively.  Sometimes God is not the "deliverer" we hope for, but God is always near as "comforter," strenghtener," and eventually "restorer" of new life.

How near is God amidst the problems that all of us face from day to day?  In our times of sorrow or perplexity or danger, do we look for God to be near?  Sometimes our feelings of aloneness comes because we do not realize how near God is.  It helps to pray, even if we do not know what to pray for.  Reach out to God; complain to God; ask help from God!  Our specific words are not as important as the very act of reaching out.  In remarkable ways we may discover that God was there with us all the time.