SOCIAL JUSTICE

                                             God's Work, Our Hands

There is a wonderful article about the Lenten Season in the February 2012 issue of The Lutheran by David L Miller.

“ The river of God's life and love bursts from the bottomless spring of grace and flows through every moment of time.

Falling in the river is what Lent is for.”

When I was younger and attended churches in other states, I really was unknowing about the purpose of the forty days between Ash Wednesday, thinking it had something to do with punishment, sin and deprivation. I would routinely given up chocolate for the season or sometimes red meat. The latter was a harder exercise, as chocolate has never made one of the food triangles. I didn't even know that “Lent” meant “spring” in early Anglo-Saxon.

Miller again: “ Often we think of giving up things for Lent. It might be more useful and nearer the heart of God to use every association and every encounter of our life as an invitation to cultivate rightly ordered relationships—perichoretic relationships (God's love coming to us through the Holy Spirit, —in which understanding, mercy and the gifts of creation are freely shared to create a world of communion and justice that reflects God's triune dream for reality.”

There are many meaningful spiritual practices to participate in God's love in this season.

For example, Prayer. Pray constantly, as St. John of the Cross urged. Pray while you are walking. Pray on arising out of bed in the morning and entering bed in the evening. Try contemplative prayer, deep in the Cloud of Unknowing.

Structure a prayer center, a corner or wall, a thin place as Pastor Tracey described.

Share God's sorrow. Read or listen to the news, wars, senseless killings, suffering and death. Pray for God's help for those afflicted.

Rejoice each day. Acknowledge every small grace and beauty as a holy and sacramental gift from the Great Giver.

In Christ, Joan Smith-Lawrence, Social Concerns Chr.