A Look Inside

Bread and Wine Reading: "A Look Inside", by Edna Hong

Scripture Reading: Psalm 139: 1-14
O Lord, you have searched me and known me. You know when I sit down and when I rise up; you discern my thoughts from far away. You search out my path and my lying down, and are acquainted with all my ways. Even before a word is on my tongue, O Lord, you know it completely. You hem me in, behind and before, and lay your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is so high that I cannot attain it. Where can I go from your spirit? Or where can I flee from your presence? If I ascend to heaven, you are there; if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there. If I take the wings of the morning and settle at the farthest limits of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me fast. If I say, ‘Surely the darkness shall cover me, and the light around me become night’, even the darkness is not dark to you; the night is as bright as the day, for darkness is as light to you. For it was you who formed my inward parts; you knit me together in my mother’s womb.I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; that I know very well.

Just as Lent is a time of refocusing and redirecting, it is also a time of reclaiming our true identity, of finding that self that God calls you to be. It is a hard journey. The journey through the wilderness of our souls is fraught with hidden dangers and perils that most of us would rather not experience. We will be forced to look at those parts of our lives that are impeding our soul’s vision of who it is, if only so that we will know what parts we need to strip away or even discard. It is a journey with the mission to free our souls to be with God, to finally be who God calls each of us to be from the very beginning of our being. God know this part of us so well. Perhaps God has hidden it so well that we will have to journey to find it.

Edna Hong contends that “the purpose of Lent is to arouse. To arouse the sense of sin…To arouse the sense of gratitude for the forgiveness of sins. To arouse or to motivate the works of love and the work of justice that one does out of gratitude for the forgiveness of one’s sins.” She describes the Christian life, then, as a journey of downward descent, a journey deep down into who we are, deep down into the depths of ourselves, into that part that God knows so well. “It ends,” she says, “before the cross, where we stand in the white light of a new beginning.”

Discussion Questions:
1.) What keeps us from seeing our true self?
2.) What will you find when “you search and know yourself”?
3.) What meaning does the image of the Christian life as one of a “downward descent” hold for you?

So go forth toward deep into your self, the self that God is calling you to find!

Grace and Peace,

Shelli

In Mirrors

Bread and Wine Reading: "In Mirrors", by William Wangerin
Scripture Reading: 1 Corinthians 13: 8-13
Love never ends. But as for prophecies, they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will come to an end. For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part; but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways. For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.

Wangerin reminds us that in mirrors we see ourselves. Perhaps we see more than we want to see, but we see the real self. As all of who struggle with weight, or those nasty lines on our face, or even just some piece of clothing that just doesn’t look the way it did on the headless mannequin in the store know, mirrors do not lie. He says that “mirrors that hide nothing hurt me. But this is the hurt of purging and precious renewal—and these are the mirrors of dangerous grace.”

Others can be mirrors for us, reflecting the “us” we’d rather not see either by gentle or harsh words or even an all-too-obvious facial expression. Wangerin says that Christ’s suffering and death is also a mirror, if only we choose to see it. Perhaps the reason that this season of Lent is difficult for us is that it forces us to face our real selves—our hurts, our failures, our sins. Because this walk of passion and death is not just Christ’s to walk; it is ours. It is a forced walk through the shadows of our own lives, a walk through our pains and failures and the late coming feelings of remorse for things we have done. This season also shows us those places where we have been complicit in the injustices of the world, where we have been part of the crucifixion of the love and compassion and goodness that is Christ. And in this way, “Lent can heal the soul’s blindness.” (Howard, 44)

The season of Lent is truly a mirror of our real selves and our real lives as they are revealed in Christ. Again, this walk to the Cross is hard. But, there…there in the mirror is also your Resurrection, reflected by Christ’s own!

Discussion Questions:
1.) What are the things in your mirror that you’d rather not see?
2.) What does the idea of your own death and your own resurrection reflected in the mirror mean for you?
3.) What reflection of this season of Lent does this provide for you?

So go forth with new awareness that Christ’s Passion, Death, and Resurrection is a reflection of your own!

Grace and Peace,

Shelli