Lent 1

Preparation

    Please begin by reading Deuteronomy 26:1-11 in your Bible. If you do not have one at hand, we have provided that text for you at the end of this reflection.

Reflection--Journey to the Promised Land
  
    It had been quite a trip for Israel! We know from history that there were to be other hardships in her future, but for now her 40-year desert journey out of Egypt’s slavery was almost at an end. She stood ready to make her home in the Promised Land and dreamed of what she would do when she was there. It would be a time of celebration; remembering where she had been and expressing gratitude to God who had brought her through her journey. Each one would offer to God part of the rich harvest the people anticipated. Israel was clear that her freedom and all that she had were the result not of her own doing, but of God’s incredible grace.

    We, as God’s people of this time, have just begun a much shorter journey; a journey of 40 days rather than 40 years. The promised land at the end is the glory of Easter and the celebration of God’s best gift of all; hope and new life through the risen Christ.

    The 40 days of Lent are an appropriate time for us to stand back and review our own life journeys, just as Israel did. Each of us has a journey story to tell. Each of us is at a different place on the road.

    Perhaps some of us haven’t even started yet. We are still in our own particular Egypt. Those in this place know, at some level, that things aren’t working. There is a deep hunger for something that’s missing in our lives we can’t even identify. Perhaps we have tried many things to fill that hunger. Perhaps they’ve started off with promise, but somehow we are still hungry.

    Others are excited, packed and ready to go. They have come to that place of joy where they have begun to develop a real relationship with Jesus. What a wonder it is to know, at last, that we really are God’s beloved and that, if we are open to it, this Holy One wants to be our companion for the rest of this trip that we call life. We have come to realize that it is this companion who will fill up the hunger that we have felt for so long.

    Others are already on the way and know that they have God with them, but are still in desert places; perhaps serious health issues, or financial hardship, or being “unequally yoked” in a relationship with someone who does not yet really know Jesus and resents the presence of the One at the core of our existence. It is especially important to stop and pause for reflection if you are in one of these places. Has not God brought you through other perils even though you could not see God’s presence at the time? Will not God do that again? It is not a time to waiver or be draw off course (there is an evil one who loves to use these times of discouragement to do that). It is a time to remember that God’s grace is not a sometimes thing and that God still has “a mighty hand and an outstretched arm.”

    But perhaps you are in one of those wonderful places where you stand, like Israel, looking over the border into some promised land. It is so real that you can almost taste it and your mood is one of joy and celebration. Here too you can do little better than to imitate Israel. Remember, with thanksgiving, that it is God who has brought you here. Certainly some good things can come from our own efforts, but not the very best things. We get to the very best places only when we give up the foolish notion that we can do it on our own and acknowledge total dependence on God. That will bring us to the real promised land, not some pale imitation of it.

    So it’s time. Take a few moments each day this Lenten season to shut out life’s distracting noise. Remember who you are, where you are, how you got here, and most of all, whose you are.

revclay

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Deuteronomy 26:1-11

    When you have come into the land that the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance to possess, and you possess it, and settle in it, you shall take some of the first of all the fruit of the ground, which you harvest from the land that the Lord your God is giving you, and you shall put it in a basket and go to the place that the Lord your God will choose as a dwelling for his name. You shall go to the priest who is in office at that time, and say to him, "Today I declare to the Lord your God that I have come into the land that the Lord swore to our ancestors to give us."

    When the priest takes the basket from your hand and sets it down before the altar of the Lord your God, you shall make this response before the Lord your God: "A wandering Aramean was my ancestor; he went down into Egypt and lived there as an alien, few in number, and there he became a great nation, mighty and populous. When the Egyptians treated us harshly and afflicted us, by imposing hard labor on us, we cried to the Lord, the God of our ancestors; the Lord heard our voice and saw our affliction, our toil, and our oppression. The Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, with a terrifying display of power, and with signs and wonders; and he brought us into this place and gave us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey. So now I bring the first of the fruit of the ground that you, O Lord, have given me."

    You shall set it down before the Lord your God and bow down before the Lord your God. Then you, together with the Levites and the aliens who reside among you, shall celebrate with all the bounty that the Lord your God has given to you and to your house. [NRSV]