A Daily Lent

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...

Matthew 7:9 - 10 “Which of you, if your son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake?" This Jesus-saying is offered in the wider context of prayer and the admonition to keep asking, seeking and knocking. In these two verses, Jesus made a statement about the nature of God to give good gifts to those who asked for the gifts. Let's turn the prism for just a moment. Instead of focusing on the parent who gives wisely to the child, let's think about the child who does the asking. Do children really know what to ask for? Do children really know what they need? Ungoverned, a child would ask for a diet of donuts, candy, and soft drinks, with ice cream for dessert. There's no shame in being a child, in asking for things that are very primitive. For children to act like children is appropriate. Many persons, however, never grow up. Spiritually speaking -- and emotionally, as well -- many, many persons are still asking for d...