A Daily Lent

Is God Absent? Friday of the Fifth Week of Lent – April 3, 2020 During the current moment’s COVID-19-induced alteration of rhythms and life-practices, with the onset of fear and uncertainty, I’m hearing people talk about God’s apparent absence. “ Where is God now? ” “ How could God allow this pandemic? ” “ Why doesn’t God do something? ” All are legitimate questions, probably ones that have crossed all our minds at some point, a quick, fleeting thought. Perhaps those expressions are healthy in a time like this. I know they certainly don’t shake God. In fact, I’m confident they say more about us than they say about God. You’ve heard people say, perhaps, “God showed up in this situation or in that event!” We have our own notions of how God is present, sometimes measured by some external results that come from the event, or sometimes by our own goose-bumpy feelings about the situation. Not to completely discredit any of that, but God is bigger than all those feelings or ta...

God in the Desert Monday of the Fifth Week of Lent – March 30, 2020 Dealing with the coronavirus pandemic seems to be all that is on anyone’s mind at the moment. We are experiencing a sobering moment in time. Where is God in this moment? Where is God in any desert experience? It is one thing to affirm in normal times that God is present always and everywhere. In these edge experiences that press hard on us, though, we may find that our usual felt experience of God is missing. We don’t have the same sense of God as we ordinarily do. Often we find that what Cummings calls, “the purifying action of the desert experience” centers around our notions of God. In other words, the expectations and beliefs we have built up around God – who God is, how God is, where God is, and so on – in ordinary days gets tested, even purified, and the desert experience presses hard on those assumptions. In fact, a shift in our image of God may very well be what comes from a desert experience such as th...

Thursday of the Fifth Week of Lent Daily Reading : John 8:51 – 59 Focus Passage : “Your father Abraham rejoiced at the thought of seeing my day; he saw it and was glad." "You are not yet fifty years old," they said to him, "and you have seen Abraham!" "Very truly I tell you," Jesus answered, "before Abraham was born, I am!" At this, they picked up stones to stone him, but Jesus hid himself, slipping away from the temple grounds. (Jn. 8:56 – 59) “Very truly I tell you,” Jesus answered, “before Abraham was born, I am!” Jesus used the words, “I Am,” to refer to himself. The words are especially prominent in John’s Gospel. Jesus is the fulfillment of the “I AM” of the Hebrew Scriptures. At the burning bush in Exodus 3, Moses stood before God and inquired about the identity of the One sending him. The God-voice from the bush said, “I AM that I AM” (Ex. 3:14). God was revealed as pure Being, complete Essence. I A...