Raised from the Grave of Exile

During Lent I am reading/writing my way through writing to God: 40 Days of Praying With My Pen by Rachel G. Hackenberg. Sometimes I will post my prayers.

This is my response to Ezekiel 37: 1-14 (Day 1)

Raised from the Grave of Exile

Our lives laid waste

•      scattered bones in a valley
•      disobedience defiled our birthright, Your plan

Disconnected from life, function, ourselves

Then . . .

Your Messenger Lived Scripture

•      encased in the skin of love

Your truth powerfully erupts in our stony hearts

Raising us from the grave of exile

Spirit-power saturating the assembling frameworks of who we are to become

Baby-fresh skin erecting a boundary between what is inner and outer

Your Breath of Life connecting us to You

• the source of All
• the source of nourishment, unity, rest

Our lives becoming who You planned

• functioning body of Christ

Holy now because of the Cross

Connected, eternally alive, knowing You are the sovereign God of All

Amen . . . so be it . . . gratitude dripping from my dry bones turning into purpose-filled flesh

Related Posts

• Ash Wednesday Quiz
• Ash Wednesday & Lent in Two Minutes a Youtube presentation by Busted Halo.com
• 3 Reasons to Celebrate Lent
• I Missed Shrove Tuesday but I Didn’t Miss Ash Wednesday (2008)
• Slowing Down & Getting Back to Essentials for Lent (2008)
• Two Sentences About Lent

NOTE: I have the good fortune to partner with Fawnda from Fireflies and Jellybeans for a giveaway of her tote pattern to a Fruitfulwords reader. (I was one of her pattern testers.)  Go to this link for the details. The deadline to enter is February 26, 2012.

Pondering Success & the Drowned Voice

“I valued accomplishment.”

“I valued being special.”

“I valued results.”

“The driven part didn’t question or examine these values.”

“It took them as real, and believed it was following the carrot “success” [and the road "righteousness"] wholeheartedly. Didn’t everyone believe in success? I never asked, “Success at what cost?”"

“A part of me is quiet.”

“It knows about simplicity, about commitment, and the joy of doing what I do well. That part is the artist, the child – it is receptive and has infinite courage.”

“But time and my busyness drowned the quiet voice.”

The above words are from Plain and Simple (page 5) by Sue Bender.

Pondering Procrastination

Choosing the wrong values and too many of them have led me to an unfocused, frenzied life.

Too many choices . . . all lining themselves under the appropriate lists of accomplishment, special, and results.

Too many choices . . . more and more calling at my life’s door. Each beckoning me into its grip of more.

I’ve collected these choices (some very good and noble) and added them to my to-do’s. Now surrounded by piles of varying heights of accomplishment, special, and results. And righteousness - not all my choices are indiscriminate.

Indiscriminate: Having no particular pattern, purpose, organization, or structure.

These piles, my plies, have their own voice and their own demands, much like frisky kittens aloof, attacking, and affectionate, alternating, without seeming reason. And not knowing which to tend to first, I tend ALL or none.

Paralyzed by the responsibility of responsible choice, I make none until forced.

Procrastination covers the piles like a blanket muffling their cries for attention.

Slowing Down & Getting Back to Essentials for Lent

Illness can be a good thing. I tend to reevaluate my life after I’m on the mend.

Last week I was slowed way down because of  the respiratory flu which also exacerbated my asthma. Yesterday was the first day in a week that I felt no pain and had a cheery spirit inside. Today is the same. 

When I wasn’t sleeping, I browsed through a book by John Ortberg, The Life You’ve Always Wanted: Six Sessions on Spiritual Disciplines For Ordinary People.

“You must ruthlessly eliminate hurry,” a wise friend advised Ortberg. 

What? Why?

“Again and again as we pursue spiritual life, we must do battle with hurry. For many of us the great danger is not that we will renounce our faith. It is that we will become so distracted and rushed and preoccupied that we will settle for a mediocre version of it. We will just skim our lives instead of actually living them.” This paragraph is in chapter 5, An Unhurried Life, page 77.

“Following Jesus cannot be done at a sprint” (79).

Ortberg identifies 6 symptoms of people who have hurry sickness.

1. Constantly speeding up daily activities - Always pursuing the fastest line in a store & at a stoplight?
2.  Multiple-tasking – “Ever try to eat dinner, watch tv, read, and carry on a conversation at the same time?”
3. Clutter -  Life is cluttered by physical things and “Life is cluttered when we are weighed down by the burden of all the things we have failed to say no to. Then comes the clutter of forgetting important dates, of missing appointments, of not following through.”
4. Superficiality – Wisdom & depth take time to cultivate. Many of us have traded these for information because “we want to microwave maturity.”
5. An inability to love - “Love and hurry are fundamentally incompatible.”
6. Sunset fatigue – This is when we are just too tired,or too drained, or too preoccupied, to love the people to whom we have made the deepest promises…Hurry prevents us from receiving love from the Father or giving it to His children.”

Ouch! I’m guilty of hurry sickness and the fallout that surrounds my poor choices. Ortberg does have suggestions on what to do next. But I want to spend some time with God and see what He says to me first.

Anyone else have hurry sickness?

Used to have it? What did you do to live your busy life well?

How Do You Grow In More Than One Area At A Time?

Even though I really want to set aside time for these three areas, I am still neglectful of slowing down long enough to significantly challenge my life, mind and heart.

Life has been very busy, but these are the times I really need to slow down for meditation, confession, deeper prayer and purposeful living/giving.

I wonder if I am expecting too much, too fast, too soon? Maybe it would be sufficient and even OK if I put aside only 10 minutes for one area.

If that’s all I concentrated on this Lent, it’s farther than I would have been if I’d kept up with my usual pace.

So tonight I will have a 10 minute prayer/Bible reading/listening time with God to see if I see this differently afterwards.

How do you all handle growing deeper in more than one area at a time?

3 Reasons to Celebrate Lent

“We are people who, many times, have done wrong and need to repent; thus the need to make a good confession.

We are people who many times get carried away with selfishness and so need to start thinking of others; thus the need for alms.

We are people who often lose sight of purpose for which we were created by God. We need, therefore, to recover our sight. Thus the need for prayer.

This is why we celebrate Lent.”

(Hat tip to Ninure Sanders.)

How’s it going with your confession, almsmgiving and praying?

Two Sentences About Lent

“Lent is a time of stripping down to essentials, as each Christian focuses on his or her individual relationship with God. It is a time when Christians remember our baptisms, when Jesus washed away our sins, giving us newness of life to celebrate in the triumph of Palm Sunday and the glory of Easter.”

I Missed Shrove Tuesday but I Didn’t Miss Ash Wednesday

Fasting, penitence and meditation are typical spiritual disciplines that are encouraged during Lent. The purpose is to prepare ourselves for Easter and to prepare ourselves to be more like the One Easter is centered upon: Jesus.

Often people will give up something, during Lent, to help them focus more on Jesus and less on their physical/material world. Some typical things given up are sugar, using credit cards, or TV watching. Go here for more ideas.

I’ve thought long and hard about what I want to do during Lent so that at the end I am more like Jesus. So I asked myself the following questions . . .

• What “sins” do I keep committing? Am I willing to let go of this bondage to sin? If yes, how?
• Which Fruit of the Spirit am I lacking?
• What do I need to do/stop doing in order to become more like Jesus?

 I want to do 3 things . . .

1. One of my sins is making decisions out of fear instead of honesty. Yes, I want to combat that. I don’t know how yet.
2. The fruit I will study and pray for is self-control, especially in the area of procrastination.
3. Since I am a visual person, I will read/think on several things:

• The Silver Chair by CS Lewis
• Church Fathers Lenten Reading Plan
• Peril and Peace: Volume 1: Chronicles of the Ancient Churchby Mindy and Brandon Withrow
• 30 Days with Jesus: The Gospels in Chronological Order by F. Lagard Smith
• The Words and Works of Jesus Christ by J. Dwight Pentecost

I want to give up shopping except for basic necessities. Tonia encouraged me by doing this in October of 2006. She, her family and many other bloggys did this for 30 Days. I did it as well, but stopped writing posts about it; and I’ve lost the benefits of it.

 I picked this because I want to re-break materialism’s hold on me, so I can tune in more to God’s hold on me.

How will you prepare yourself for Easter and for the One who caused Easter to be?

Ash Wednesday Quiz

Ash Wednesday True/False Quiz

1. T/F Ash Wednesday is the last day of Lent.

2. T/F Ashes (mixed with oil) are put on the forehead to signify joy.

3. T/F Monks receive their mark of ashes on their tonsure rather than their foreheads.

4. T/F The ashes are put on the forehead or tonsure to remind of sorrow for sins and of the necessity of changing one’s life.

5. T/F At some churches, believers wash the ashes off before leaving the church to symbolize that they have been cleansed of their sins.

6. T/F In other churches, participants leave the ashes on when they leave, thereby “carrying the cross out into the world.”

7. For Extra Credit: T/F A tonsure is the tip of the tongue.

And the answers are . . .

I Missed Shrove Tuesday . . .

My Bible and notebook were set aside for thoughtfully engaging Shrove Tuesday.

Shrove Tuesday (a.k.a. Mardi Gras) is a day of self-examination. James Kiefer says “many Christians make a special point of self-examination, of considering what wrongs they need to repent, and what amendments of life or areas of spiritual growth they especially need to ask God’s help in dealing with. Often they consult on these matters with a spiritual counselor, or receive shrift.”

To receive shrift is the act of being shriven. That old English is not too helpful.

Kiefer says in modern English ,  “To shrive someone is to hear his acknowledgment of his sins, to assure him of God’s forgiveness, and to give him appropriate spiritual advice.”

The pancake mix and lemons were on the counter waiting to be mixed with fat, butter and eggs, all foods forbidden during Lent. Click here for why.

But before I knew it, the day was over.