The Painted Prayerbook

…and raised us up with him and seated us with him
in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.
—Ephesians 2.6

From a lectionary reading for Lent 4: Ephesians 2.1-10

Reflection for Friday, March 16 (Day 21 of Lent)

As I write this I am miles above the earth, flying westward toward Colorado, where Gary and I will be leading several events in the Denver area. It gives a certain perspective to today’s reading about being raised with Christ and seated with him in the heavenly places. And so as I arc across the country, watching the familiar terrain of the Southeast giving way to the contours of the West, I am here to ask you: Where are you seated? Where are you letting yourself—your attention, your intentions—be drawn these days? Are the things you are giving your attention to drawing you closer to Christ or distancing you? What do you see from where you are?

[To use the image “In the Heavenly Places,” please visit this page at janrichardsonimages.com. Your use of janrichardsonimages.com helps make the ministry of The Painted Prayerbook possible. Thank you!]

But God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which God loved us, even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ.
—Ephesians 2.4-5a

From a lectionary reading for Lent 4: Ephesians 2.1-10

Reflection for Thursday, March 15 (Day 20 of Lent)

Even when we were dead, Paul writes.
Even when we turned away from the One who had created us.
Even when we lived in the grip of what drew our gaze from God.
Even when we were oblivious.
Even when we followed a path fashioned of nothing
but our own desires.
Even when we wandered far and willfully away.
Even when we forgot to look past our own feet and to see
the wonders not of our making.
Even when we failed to stand in awe, to breathe thanks,
to lean into the love that had waited long for us.
Even when, Paul writes.
Even when,
even then:
grace.

[To use the image “Even When We Were Dead,” please visit this page at janrichardsonimages.com. Your use of janrichardsonimages.com helps make the ministry of The Painted Prayerbook possible. Thank you!]

“Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness?”
—Numbers 21.5

From a lectionary reading for Lent 4: Numbers 21.4-9

Reflection for Monday, March 12 (Day 17 of Lent)

We were made for freedom. Formed and fashioned by God, breathing with God’s own breath, we were created to live and move at full stretch and to offer our gifts in complete and unconfined measure. It is a disturbing peculiarity of humans that we have so often resisted this: that across time—and still—we have had such difficulty living into the divine freedom that God intended. We have enslaved others. Or we have taken our freedom lightly. Or we have given it away, trading it for something that looked like security. Or we have let it be taken from us because we didn’t know our own power or didn’t think that freedom was a state we deserved.

When we’re given a taste of freedom—like the people of the Exodus in today’s passage—it can sometimes seem too difficult. It requires vast amounts of intention and courage and faith to live into the liberation for which God has designed us. As the Israelites discovered, freedom is a big, uncharted territory, full of uncertainty and responsibility that can overwhelm our ability to see the gifts and possibilities the unconstrained landscape contains. Faced with that uncertainty and responsibility—and, let’s face it, with the reality that entering the terrain of freedom can involve discomfort and slim or distasteful rations—the confinement of the known can start to look more appealing than the freedom of the unknown.

And so, in the company of the children of Israel who had to learn to live into liberation, I am here today to ask you: Have you given away some part of yourself for the sake of security, or to keep the waters smooth, or because you thought it was expected? To whom or to what are you beholden? Is there some unknown territory that you need to press into with courage and intention in order to live more deeply into the freedom for which God has created you? Is there someone who needs you to come alongside them as they seek to do this in their own lives?

[To use the image “In the Wilderness,” please visit this page at janrichardsonimages.com. Your use of janrichardsonimages.com helps make the ministry of The Painted Prayerbook possible. Thank you!]

But we proclaim Christ crucified…
Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.
—1 Corinthians 1.23-24

From a lectionary reading for Lent 3: 1 Corinthians 1.18-25

Reflection for Saturday, March 10 (Day 16 of Lent)

If there’s anything the wilderness journey of Lent should teach us, it’s that the place where we think we have something all figured out is the place where we should fall on our knees in humility and think again. Like a desert, Lent invites us into a space where seemingly wild contradictions hold together. This is a season to draw close to the God who provides wellsprings in the wilderness, who brings honey from the rock, who offers beauty in the places that seem most barren. And who, Paul tells us in today’s reading, became wisdom and power incarnate in a man whose life ended, by the world’s reckoning, in utter defeat.

This God makes little sense. And so this season challenges us to be present to the God who does not always seem sensible, and to trust that something deeper than sense is at work in our lives. These wilderness days of Lent invite us to stop, to look closely at our landscape, and to open our eyes to how God dwells in what may seem the unlikeliest places: in paradox, in mystery, in what appears to be contradictory, in what the world overlooks or belittles. Lent confronts us with our own certainties and assumptions about how God should act;  it calls us to sit with God’s contradictions until a door opens in their midst.

[To use the image “Christ the Power and Wisdom,” please visit this page at janrichardsonimages.com. Your use of janrichardsonimages.com helps make the ministry of The Painted Prayerbook possible. Thank you!]