Pastor's Blog - March 2012

The month of March is a season of waiting. The rays of the sun finally cross directly over the Equator, bringing warmth, longer days and shorter nights. The long winter comes to a close and signs of Spring begin to flourish. The things long dormant and still awaken with new possibilities. Such is the season. And so too are our spiritual lives.
 
The disciplines of prayer, confession, and fasting in the quiet of our souls give way to new opportunities. The death of the old ways moves us toward resurrection joy, but not in ways that we can control. God’s Spirit is at work. But to see it we need to open the eyes of our hearts.
 
May this Lenten season with its journey to the cross of Jesus deepen our lives as our souls give way once again to God’s audacious power.
 
The following is a “Lenten Prayer of Awakening” by Edward Hays, taken from Prayers for a Planetary Pilgrim, (page 136).
Come, O Life-giving Creator,
and rattle the door latch
of my slumbering heart.
Awaken me as you breathe upon
a winter-wrapped earth,
gently calling to life virgin Spring.
 
Awaken in these fortified days
of Lenten prayer and discipline
my youthful dream of holiness.
Call me forth from the prison camp
of my numerous past defeats
and my narrow patterns of being
to make my ordinary life extra-ordinarily alive.
 
Show to me during these Lenten days
how to take the daily things of life
and by submerging them in the sacred,
to infuse them with a great love
for you, O God, and for others.
Guide me to perform simple acts of love and prayer,
the real works of reform and renewal
of this overture to the spring of the Spirit.
 
O Christ,
help me not to waste
these precious Lenten days
of my soul’s spiritual springtime.
Pastor Ed