Praying to Become More Conscious of God During This Season of Lent

 Ash Wednesday

Today is Ash Wednesday, the day we enter into the season of Lent – 40 days before Easter where we consider how prayer, fasting, and deeds of charity help us to consider God’s priorities that brought Jesus to earth to die for us.  How deeply are we longing to be in close fellowship with God?  How willing are we to put aside things that we like to have, activities that we like to do, people we like to be with, for something that is greater?  To what degree are we willing to inconvenience ourselves on behalf of helping others? 

These are fair questions at any point, on any day, but they are so appropriate also in this season of the pandemic when we feel like we’d like this to be “over already” and here we are looking down the nose at “virus variants” that have health officials worried and which already in Canada have led to some pretty exponential growth cycles in even such hardy and well dispersed provinces as Newfoundland.

Traditionally we’ve known that Lent was about “giving up” something – whether it was a meal, or chocolate or a certain internet game etc.  While there is probably some merit in doing these kinds of things – it certainly gets our attention, particularly at the beginning of the season when we miss the routine they brought to us.  However, I think this is a season to consider how we are giving up our lives to the Lord and allowing the new life He wants to create in us to come to the front.

A common Bible verse prayer for this season is:

Have mercy on me, O God, according to your unfailing love; according to your great compassion blot out my transgressions. Wash away all my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin. (Psalm 51:1-2)

It is wonderful isn’t it that we can come to God and ask for love and forgiveness, even though we don’t deserve it.  We can expect God to respond generously to us because His love for us is unfailing and His compassion for us is great.  This verse mentions transgressions, iniquity and sin – all things for us to have washed away.  We all do wrong things – transgression.  We have certain way in which we feel weak because we trip us and fall I the same sins over and over again  Those patterns of sin are iniquity.  And then we have some things that I suspect we are not even aware of yet – there’s a bent towards sin in us that only God’s Holy Spirit can show us and help us to move away from into God’s care as we journey through this life on earth.  We are conceived in sin, the Bible tells us.  We are influenced by sinful things in our culture every day of our lives.  We need our consciousness opened up more and more so we see how we are sinful, repent, and return to God.

A couple of verses later in that Psalm help us invite God to do this new work in our lives:

Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me.  Do not cast me from your presence or take your Holy Spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me.  Psalm 51:10-12

And then I also love how Paul expresses the new way of living that we are called to.  I’ve thought about and prayed about this verse many times and I still often have it roll around in my head as I think about how each phrase tries to build on the one before it – and express the struggle that seems to go on in us as we seek to live as sons and daughters of God, rather than as self-willed people following the lures and lies of the evil one.

I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.  Galatians 2:20

Lord today we admit that things need to change in our lives – not just surfaces changes of a habit here and there  -- but radical change where we see the purpose of our lives from Your perspective and live for You rather than for ourselves.  Teach us Heavenly Father, what it means to be crucified with Christ so that our own self-will is truly laid down and Jesus gets to live out His live through us.  Lord, in every way we think, act, desire, speak, or even react, we want to do so as a response to the great love You’ve shown for us as Jesus gave Himself for us. 

It’s a bit like we need to free ourselves from the bondage of ourselves, as one write put it, to “fast from ourselves.”  We’re grateful for the personalities and gifts You’ve given to each of us but we too much live to express those in ways that are comfortable and convenient and helpful to our agenda rather than seeking every day to surrender them to You for expressing Your love and grace in our broken world.

Teach us in these next 40 days, we pray, along with a guy named ST. RICHARD OF CHICHESTER:

Thanks be to you, my Lord Jesus Christ for all the benefits you have given me, for all the pains and insults you have borne for me.  A most merciful Redeemer, Friend, and Brother, may I know you more clearly, love you more dearly, follow you more nearly, day by day. Amen.