2019 Lenten Devotional 1

One tradition I am intending to carry into the present from my previous blogging is the Lenten Devotional. Now, I am aware that it is not yet Ash Wednesday. But I still wanted to begin because yesterday's message at my church (I still go to the Evanston Vineyard) was powerful AND brought back to my mind and my spirit not only the importance, but also the beauty and sweetness of setting aside time for God.

Zechariah 1:1-6, New King James Version: A Call to Repentance

1 In the eighth month of the second year of Darius, the word of the Lord came to Zechariah the son of Berechiah, the son of Iddo the prophet, saying, 2 “The Lordhas been very angry with your fathers. 3 Therefore say to them, ‘Thus says the Lord of hosts: “Return to Me,” says the Lord of hosts, “and I will return to you,” says the Lord of hosts. 4 “Do not be like your fathers, to whom the former prophets preached, saying, ‘Thus says the Lord of hosts: “Turn now from your evil ways and your evil deeds.” ’ But they did not hear nor heed Me,” says the Lord.

5 “Your fathers, where are they?
And the prophets, do they live forever?
6 Yet surely My words and My statutes,
Which I commanded My servants the prophets,
Did they not overtake your fathers?

“So they returned and said:

‘Just as the Lord of hosts determined to do to us,
According to our ways and according to our deeds,
So He has dealt with us.’ ” ’ ”

I have a confession to make: even at my current age, I still dislike reading. Moreover, I still dislike stopping whatever I'm doing, just to do nothing else BUT read. And I also have very little patience for (in my mind) feeling like I have to read something that I've read a billion times before (which is not true; but still...).

But lately I have heard God speak, through a few different people in my life, to get back to reading the Bible. After all, even though it's a thing that I have tricked myself into thinking I've read it a billion times over and whine internally at the thought of reading it a billion-and-a-first time, the reality is that the Bible is so big that I needn't worry at the thought of being bored by a section of text simply because I've read it recently. I can just go find a different passage of text, after all.

In the six months leading up to my baptism in December 2013 (a milestone I neglected to mention in my catching-up post), I received a lot of prophecy and encouragement and prayer. Afterward, it all stopped. For a year I was frustrated and at times angry about it, and heard nothing from God or anyone else until I showed up to a worship band rehearsal in February 2015 to find a Bible, left behind, sitting right there on the music stand designated to me. To the casual eye, it would appear that someone simply forgot their Bible. To me, it was a very clear message: "you need to get back to reading this."

Along with my historical gaps of not reading the Bible at all, let alone anything close to every day, my Lenten Devotional practices also went completely by the wayside the last 7 years. I had grown up an Episcopalian; of course we did Lent every year. During my Evanston years (1992-1996; 2000-2004), Lent primarily looked like refraining from saying or singing the word "Hallelujah", and instead singing worship music that called for quieter accompanying instruments (a small portable organ rather than the big pipe organ, for example). During my New York years (1996-2000), Lent looked like wearing black vestments instead of the usual radiant red ones, and especially during the GR-A years: no sugar, no ketchup (although that may have been year-round), and for us also to choose something additional on our own to give up for those 6 weeks.

Interestingly, it wasn't until my second (self-imposed) exile from church (ca. 2007-2010) that I began the blogging devotionals. And then once I stepped away from the blog, Lent kind of became something that happened around me, rather than something I even paid attention to, let alone participated in. ["For everything, there is a season..."]

The point of me going into all that backstory is this: in today's passage from Zechariah, as I was first writing it by hand into my journal, I did a practice called "Lectio Divina," which is simply meditating on the text and asking the Holy Spirit to reveal a word or a short phrase that really jumps out at me. That one word today is: RETURN. As in, "return to me," says the Lord of Hosts. As I meditated on this one word and then began to share the passage in this post, I felt God remind me of 1.) specifically how He was and is calling me to return; and 2.) to use today's blog post for me to self-reflect on my struggle in this particular way of returning to connecting with Him (and moreso, setting aside the time and the space in my mind and my spirit to do so).

My goal with my Lenten Devotionals in 2019 is to post at least once a week specific to this topic, with 6 (maybe 7) in total, and to use this blog as an appropriate vehicle to reflect and to once again grow spiritually. I may not reach this goal, but I'm going to try.