Dear Friends,
March and April, Lent and Easter are obviously coupled but feel like very different times. Seasonally, March is early spring and can still become very cold, April is ‘normally’ milder, even having warmer days. Whilst I like March with its yellow daffodils, I prefer April and the mild, occasionally warm, breeze.
Lent is largely in March. During Lent we focus our energy and faith on Jesus’ experience in the wilderness where he was tempted by the Devil. Jesus’ 40 days in the wilderness is set against the earlier story of Israel’s 40 years in the wilderness. The wilderness (desert) is a powerful image within the bible, a place where the Son of God and the people of God are stripped of everything superfluous to life, leaving only faith and trust in God.
During Lent we try to live simply, wilderness like, making extra time with God for prayer and listening to and reading his word.
Why not follow the daily devotionals, ‘Worship in the Wilderness’, where we’ll concentrate on a few biblical stories and texts? How deep might God take us?
Then in April, we’ll commemorate the sacrificial death of Jesus Christ on Good Friday followed by his glorious resurrection on Easter Sunday. We will turn from the barren wilderness to the glory of new and eternal life. We’ll sing and celebrate that Christ is risen and that there is hope which crosses this mortal life and the one to come. The Apostle Paul while imprisoned wrote to the church in Philippi. In a short verse he captures the spirit of both Lent and Easter, he writes, ‘for to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain’ (Phil 1:21), we ‘live’ for a time in the wilderness, but we are assured of the ‘gain’ to eternal life.
Wishing you an insightful Lent and a glorious Easter.
God bless
Gavin