This Lenten Season

Hello faithful family, friends, and followers. Wow, what a difference a year makes! Joy and I spent the entirety of the Lenten Season 2024 in the hospital. In some ways, it will always be the most special, albeit most challenging, 40 days we have ever experienced. It started with Joy’s multiple severe injuries and complete right side paralysis to by Easter Sunday Joy having just had her cranioplasty completed and we were battling to get her back home to Minnesota.

We are so very thankful as we reflect on all the miracles we have experienced over the past year. Your faithful prayers, support, and encouragement and God’s grace and mercy shown abundantly over and over again. Easter is almost a month later this year than last, so the dates don’t exactly line up for a year ago, but obviously the importance of the season, not only because it marks the Christian faith’s hope and ultimate triumph of Christ’s victory over sin and death, but because it will always mark for us, the darkest time of our life that yet, kept holding the hope of a new and beautiful future, far above and beyond anything we imagined through the Lenten Season of 2024.

In the Church of England, the worldwide Anglican Church, and Episcopal Church of America, the liturgical calendar sets a structure followed around the world by all the churches of that faith each week. Last Sunday was the first Sunday of Lent and as a part of the liturgy for that week, there is a call to a penitent heart confessing sin and seeking mercy. As I looked over the liturgy for last Sunday, March 9th, I was struck with how relevant, how applicable, and how hope-filled, this liturgy was and how important is was for us as individuals, so badly needed by us as a nation, and what this message could mean for the world as a whole. It was also encouraging for me to think that congregations all over the world were praying this at the same time, even in the midst of the strife and chaos that so characterizes our nation and the world at the present time.

Here is just a portion of the liturgy that sought a penitent heart, confessing sin, and seeking mercy in thankfulness for Christ’s journey to the Cross and His ultimate resurrection victory:

Most holy and merciful God:

• We confess to you and to one another, and to the whole communion of saints in heaven and on earth, that we have sinned by our own fault in thought, word, and deed; by what we have done, and by what we have left undone.

• We have not loved you with our whole heart, and mind, and strength. We have not loved our neighbors as ourselves.

• We have not forgiven others, as we have been forgiven.

• We have been deaf to your call to serve, as Christ served us. We have not been true to the mind of Christ.

In confession and seeking mercy for:

• All our past unfaithfulness: the pride, hypocrisy and impatience of our lives, we confess to you.

• Our self-indulgent appetites and ways, and our exploitation of other people, we confess to you.

• Our anger at our own frustration and our envy of those more fortunate than ourselves, we confess to you.

• Our intemperate love of worldly goods and comforts, and our dishonesty in daily life and work, we confess to you.

• Our negligence in prayer and worship, and our failure to commend the faith that is in us, we confess to you.

And in repentance:

• For the wrongs we have done: for our blindness to human need and suffering, and our indifference to injustice and cruelty, have mercy on us.

• For all false judgments, for uncharitable thoughts toward our neighbors, and for our prejudice and contempt toward those who differ from us, have mercy on us.

• For our waste and pollution of your creation, and our lack of concern for those who come after us, have mercy on us.

Restore us, good Lord, and let your anger depart from us.

Accomplish in us the work of your salvation,

By the cross and passion of your Son our Lord.

I know that there are many in the faith tradition which Joy and I grew up in that scorn liturgical practices, but to me, the words above are true, necessary, and while you may not personally agree with all that is shared, I pray that we may all come, during this time of Lent, with a humble heart before our God and others as these reflections encourage.

Please keep up your prayers for Joy and her on-going recovery, for sight to the upper right quadrant, for complete healing of aphasia and apraxia, and for restoration of cognitive functions still lacking . We are in a good, but stressful time, which we will share more of next week. And, please know of our continued heartfelt prayers for all of you, we thank you for your faithful encouragement and support.