Our youth group has been practicing orders of liturgical morning prayer for much of the school year once a week. Every Tuesday morning at 5:30 am students wake up and get together to read scripture and pray. We have been following an order out of the Book of Common Prayer (1928). You can download orders for morning and evening prayer at the links below:
You can also get the daily psalms and lessons by going to THIS WEBSITE. Please join us in our communal praying each morning and evening!
Tomorrow marks the beginning of the Lenten season of the Church calendar. Ash Wednesday happens every year 40 days before Palm Sunday (the first day of Holy Week). Traditionally the Church has fasted during this time of the year to create space to examine one’s life, specifically on one’s sin and unfaithfulness to God. (A fuller explanation of the Lenten season is provided below.) I (Aaron) will be fasting from the following foods and things to create space in my life this Lenten season for self-reflection and invite you to join me in this fast:
- Meat
- Desserts (or sweets of any kind)
- Car radio
- Television (including sports)
- Espn.com (a website that consumes way too much of my time…feel free to insert Facebook or another)
“Ash Wednesday is a day set aside in the course of the Church’s year in which we as Christians are directed to contemplate the true weight of our sin. Though prayers of confession are offered throughout the year to remind us of the need for continual repentance in the Christian life Lent is the season of the church wherein the themes of sin and penitence become the chief subject of our reflections. Like confession fasting is a profitable source of spiritual development and discipline that may be practiced throughout the year. But during the course of the Lenten season the corporate fast of the church takes on an additional meaning: it is the outward and physical sign of our inward and spiritual repentance. Like Nineveh in the days of Jonah we together cover ourselves with sackcloth, smear ashes on our foreheads and begin a season of corporate repentance for our sin.
In order to properly repent of our sin we must come to some true knowledge of it. We must take a season to honestly examine ourselves, to take stock of our inner life, to examine our thoughts, words, and deeds and to identify the sin which we allow to remain in these various areas of our lives. A good Lenten fast creates increased space for silence in our lives, gives us an opportunity to cultivate the spiritual disciplines and therefore creates the circumstances in which we can more accurately come to know both God and ourselves. Forty days of relative stillness in the midst of our busy year will enable us to look beneath the surface of our sins and begin to identify the root causes of our unfaithfulness. The truth is that it is actually quite difficult to make a good confession. It is easy to create a sort of disjointed laundry list of the external things which we have done wrong. But it takes serious effort to examine the patterns of our sins, to begin to realize that they are all in fact interconnected and to identify their common source in our soul. The work of the Lenten fast is to come to an understanding of this deeply set sin within us which is the cause of all the others, to call it by name and to confess it.
Lent is our 40 day journey with Christ up to Jerusalem where he will be crucified. And the mystery of the Christian hope is this: we journey with Christ, in Christ, to Jerusalem there to willingly die with him. As St. Paul says in Galatians, to be crucified with Christ so that the old man no longer lives, but Christ lives in us. We take our small Lenten share in the in the cross of Christ, examine ourselves, repent of our deepest sins and let the old man die with him on Good Friday. Then we wait for a time with him in the grave all with the sure hope that those who die in Christ will also be made to rise in him. Easter somehow comes each year as a surprise ending to our Lenten journey. But for now it is still far off in the distance and we as a church have a long road to walk together to Jerusalem. ‘Turn ye even to me, saith the Lord, with all your heart, and with fasting, and with weeping, and with mourning: and rend your heart and not your garments, and turn unto the Lord your God: for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness, and repenteth him of the evil.’ “
- Father Mark Becher of St. Matthew’s Church in Newport Beach, March 9, 2011 (you can listen to the sermons entirety HERE.)
Aaron has started a new blog dedicated to the students, parents, and congregants of Long Beach First Church of the Nazarene. You can visit his blog by clicking the link to the right or by clicking HERE.
I forgot to pass out this week’s scripture readings. Click HERE to download it.
We have just started our series on Lament. This past week we talked about what it looks like to lament for other people who are enduring tragedy, hurt, sorrow, etc. With this series we are going to give you multiple ways to engage and respond to the issue. We hope you will take advantage of these resources to go deeper into the issue of lament.
This week we have three ways for you to engage with the issue:
1) YouTube video of Oprah
2) Podcast
3) Questions for response
All three can be found in this post so please check them out. Also, feel free to respond to one or more of the questions below by commenting to this post.
Check out Ethan, Maggie, and my podcast reacting to the videos above through the questions below:
Describe the emotions you feel from the video in five words.
What part of the video(s) struck you the most?
How do you think people were able to do such evil things?
What does Elie Wiesel mean when he says “the God of Auschwitz was the God of death?”
Where was God when such atrocities were occurring?
The Wave will be permanently meeting on Wednesday nights from 6:30-8:30 pm starting on September 7. Come join us for community, Bible study, and some good old fashioned fun!
The event is on Friday September 16, 2011. We will leave from church at 4:00 pm and return about 1:00 am. There will be an overnighter at the church after the event for all interested high school and junior students. Tickets cost $29 for admission only and $39 for admission with a catered all you can eat buffet. We will be travelling to and from the park together in church vehicles.
