Sugar Pop played at church yesterday, so we have already started celebrating Resurrection Sunday. It was a GREAT service. Our youth minister spoke on resurrection power. It was a good sermon and it was nice to have someone from our church speak instead of the interim speakers we've been having while we look for a new pastor. The worship leader picked out some good music for the weekend. My favorite was My Redeemer Lives. (Last Easter we visited Sugar Pop's brother's church - a little country Baptist church - and the choir did that song as "special music" which meant no one got to sing along with them. I appreciated getting to stand up and sing along and raise my hands and really worship this year.) We had two baptisms. A father was baptised and then we baptized his daughter. That always gets me.
The celebration continues today. Sugar Pop is making chocolate waffles for breakfast (what a great way to break my lenten chocolate fast). We'll have the traditional ham for lunch and this afternoon we go pick up Honey and her friend from the Chrysalis retreat. I'm looking forward to hearing all about their weekend.
Showing posts with label Lent. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Lent. Show all posts
Sunday, April 08, 2007
Wednesday, March 14, 2007
Sunday, February 25, 2007
Oreos
I walked into Honey's room this afternoon and this is what I saw. Yumm...Oreo cookies. I could have eaten that entire package. BUT, I gave up chocolate for Lent so I didn't even eat one. Whew!
Wednesday, February 21, 2007
Three Ways
From Devotional Bible Life Lesson:
I didn't catch the significance of this at first. The fact that it is Ash Wednesday and yesterday I was trying to come up with three things to "do" for Lent. The only thing I had come up with so far was giving up chocolate which I have had planned for some time. Here are my three ways:
1. No chocolate.
2. No television watching by myself. I don't want to make a big deal about not watching television, but I need to stop using it for company.
3. Pray for someone else. I have gotten selfish with my quiet time by just spending it reading my devotionals and praying for myself. I want to make a point to pray for someone else each day.
Which areas of your life are less than totally dependent on him? Write downthree ways you can pursue holiness before God and start practicing them.
I didn't catch the significance of this at first. The fact that it is Ash Wednesday and yesterday I was trying to come up with three things to "do" for Lent. The only thing I had come up with so far was giving up chocolate which I have had planned for some time. Here are my three ways:
1. No chocolate.
2. No television watching by myself. I don't want to make a big deal about not watching television, but I need to stop using it for company.
3. Pray for someone else. I have gotten selfish with my quiet time by just spending it reading my devotionals and praying for myself. I want to make a point to pray for someone else each day.
Thursday, January 11, 2007
Chocolate
I have been thinking lately about giving up chocolate for lent. It will be a sacrifice and hard, but that is the point after all. This morning I was thinking about it while I was showering and thinking how Sugar Pop probably wouldn't like it - we love chocolate and one of our favorite things to do is to share a nice bar of dark chocolate when we go to the movies. So, of course, when I sit down to read My Utmost for His Highest, I am not surprised to read:
I am taking that as confirmation on giving up chocolate.
WHAT MY OBEDIENCE TO GOD COSTS OTHER PEOPLE
"They laid hold upon one Simon . . . and on him they laid the cross." Luke 23:26
If we obey God it is going to cost other people more than it costs us, and that is where the sting comes in. If we are in love with our Lord, obedience does not cost us anything, it is a delight, but it costs those who do not love Him a good deal. If we obey God it will mean that other people's plans are upset, and they will gibe us with it - "You call this Christianity?" We can prevent the suffering; but if we are going to obey God, we must not prevent it, we must let the cost be paid.Our human pride entrenches itself on this point, and we say - I will never accept anything from anyone. We shall have to, or disobey God. We have no right to expect to be in any other relation than our Lord Himself was in (see Luke 8:2-3).
Stagnation in spiritual life comes when we say we will bear the whole thing ourselves. We cannot. We are so involved in the universal purposes of God that immediately we obey God, others are affected. Are we going to remain loyal in our obedience to God and go through the humiliation of refusing to be independent, or are we going to take the other line and say - I will not cost other people suffering? We can disobey God if we choose, and it will bring immediate relief to the situation, but we shall be a grief to our Lord. Whereas if we obey God, He will look after those who have been pressed into the consequences of our obedience. We have simply to obey and to leave all consequences with Him.
Beware of the inclination to dictate to God as to what you will allow to happen if you obey Him.
I am taking that as confirmation on giving up chocolate.
Friday, December 29, 2006
EWTN Family Newsletter - February 2007
I received the EWTN newsletter yesterday. There is a lot of "stuff" in it that I want to spend some time thinking about. I might write about it later after I let it sink in.
“We often look at Jesus with an attitude of predestination - a cold, hard-hearted acceptance of His sufferings and pain. We think, at least in our subconscious, that somehow He had to do what He did and so we slough it off with a shrug of our shoulders, without a thought of the awesome wonder of a suffering God. We cannot comprehend a love that desires to feel our misery.” — Mother M. Angelica
“Surely He has borne our grief and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed Him as stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities; upon Him was the chastisement that made us whole, and with His stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned everyone to his own way; and the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all.” — Isaiah 53:4-6
Over and over I read this excerpt from Isaiah. Year passes year, one Lent follows another Lent, and I continue to read it. Each time I read it, though, the passage affects me in a different way — some ways more profound than others. But the aspect that continually strikes me, each and every time I read it, is the sense of my own powerlessness. High and mighty, at times, we imagine that we are our own saviors. Yet, humble and contrite, we realize our need for Jesus Christ and the saving power of His life, death and resurrection.
In the course of my own life, I have experienced some bitter tragedies. I think most of us have. Such heavy burdens of grief and anguish are sure to come to us at one point or another. Looking at the life of our beloved Mother Angelica, we see that she too tasted such suffering from very early on in her childhood — her parents’ divorce, poverty, hunger, loneliness... How did she bear it? “Surely He has borne our grief and carried our sorrows.”
When we pray the Stations of the Cross, three separate times we recount Jesus’ falling under the heavy weight of the Cross. He fell, so that we could get up. He carried our sorrows, so that we could carry Him in our hearts. Bent under the weight of our own crosses, we must swallow our pride and allow Him to lift us up and to carry our grief. We must allow His humility to surmount our pride. His self-emptying can and must melt the glacier of our self-sufficiency.
The truth of the matter is that He has borne our grief. There is no question as to whether He will do it or not. He has done it. Now it is up to us! Will we choose to hang on to our pain, our burdens, and our sorrows.. .in a spirit of malformed independence? Or will we look in the eyes of our true Savior and thank Him for bearing our sins, our grief, our sorrows and our misery. Every suffering, whether great or small, presents us with an opportunity for growth and surrender. We are preparing once again to enter into the Lenten Season. It seems, during this time of year, we are presented with a plethora of opportunities of dying to self and rising in Christ. What will we choose to do with such opportunities?
Mother Angelica always told us NOT to miss the opportunity of becoming a great saint. Maybe we have become too accustomed to hearing her say this. But let’s think about it for a second. An opportunity can be a missed opportunity. “All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned everyone to his own way.” Or if we grab on to suffering as an opportunity for holiness and growth, we can allow Christ’s wounds to heal us. Saints are those who seized opportunities.. . and many times that meant suffering, sorrow, and sometimes even martyrdom. Yet this did not discourage them or make them despondent. They looked upon such things as favors from their Crucified King, for they knew that through such opportunities would come their sanctification.
Family, let us ponder the real meaning of suffering this Lent. Let’s go deeper into the Passion of Christ and understand the depth of what He did for us. “He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities; upon Him was the chastisement that made us whole, and with His stripes we are healed.”
“We often look at Jesus with an attitude of predestination - a cold, hard-hearted acceptance of His sufferings and pain. We think, at least in our subconscious, that somehow He had to do what He did and so we slough it off with a shrug of our shoulders, without a thought of the awesome wonder of a suffering God. We cannot comprehend a love that desires to feel our misery.” — Mother M. Angelica
“Surely He has borne our grief and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed Him as stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities; upon Him was the chastisement that made us whole, and with His stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned everyone to his own way; and the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all.” — Isaiah 53:4-6
Over and over I read this excerpt from Isaiah. Year passes year, one Lent follows another Lent, and I continue to read it. Each time I read it, though, the passage affects me in a different way — some ways more profound than others. But the aspect that continually strikes me, each and every time I read it, is the sense of my own powerlessness. High and mighty, at times, we imagine that we are our own saviors. Yet, humble and contrite, we realize our need for Jesus Christ and the saving power of His life, death and resurrection.
In the course of my own life, I have experienced some bitter tragedies. I think most of us have. Such heavy burdens of grief and anguish are sure to come to us at one point or another. Looking at the life of our beloved Mother Angelica, we see that she too tasted such suffering from very early on in her childhood — her parents’ divorce, poverty, hunger, loneliness... How did she bear it? “Surely He has borne our grief and carried our sorrows.”
When we pray the Stations of the Cross, three separate times we recount Jesus’ falling under the heavy weight of the Cross. He fell, so that we could get up. He carried our sorrows, so that we could carry Him in our hearts. Bent under the weight of our own crosses, we must swallow our pride and allow Him to lift us up and to carry our grief. We must allow His humility to surmount our pride. His self-emptying can and must melt the glacier of our self-sufficiency.
The truth of the matter is that He has borne our grief. There is no question as to whether He will do it or not. He has done it. Now it is up to us! Will we choose to hang on to our pain, our burdens, and our sorrows.. .in a spirit of malformed independence? Or will we look in the eyes of our true Savior and thank Him for bearing our sins, our grief, our sorrows and our misery. Every suffering, whether great or small, presents us with an opportunity for growth and surrender. We are preparing once again to enter into the Lenten Season. It seems, during this time of year, we are presented with a plethora of opportunities of dying to self and rising in Christ. What will we choose to do with such opportunities?
Mother Angelica always told us NOT to miss the opportunity of becoming a great saint. Maybe we have become too accustomed to hearing her say this. But let’s think about it for a second. An opportunity can be a missed opportunity. “All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned everyone to his own way.” Or if we grab on to suffering as an opportunity for holiness and growth, we can allow Christ’s wounds to heal us. Saints are those who seized opportunities.. . and many times that meant suffering, sorrow, and sometimes even martyrdom. Yet this did not discourage them or make them despondent. They looked upon such things as favors from their Crucified King, for they knew that through such opportunities would come their sanctification.
Family, let us ponder the real meaning of suffering this Lent. Let’s go deeper into the Passion of Christ and understand the depth of what He did for us. “He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities; upon Him was the chastisement that made us whole, and with His stripes we are healed.”
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