LENT DEVOTIONS: Read your Bible during Lent

This year, Lent begins on March 1 with Ash Wednesday.  To get you started reading your Bible during Lent, I’ve suggested Scripture and written brief devotionals for Ash Wednesday through Saturday.  I will continue, each week of Lent to give you suggested Scriptures to read and wonder about.  When possible, I’ll include a brief devotional as well.  Be open to God, who will speak in new and surprising ways through what spoke so long ago.  Drop me note if you have questions or comments.
 
Ash Wednesday, March 1
PREPARE TO LISTEN: I call upon you, for you will answer me, O God; incline your ear to me, hear my words.  (Psalm 17:6)
READ: Joel 2:12-17
12Yet even now, says the Lord, return to me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning; 13rend your hearts and not your clothing.  Return to the Lord, your God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and relents from punishing.  14Who knows whether he will not turn and relent, and leave a blessing behind him, a grain-offering and a drink-offering for the Lord, your God?  15Blow the trumpet in Zion; sanctify a fast; call a solemn assembly; 16gather the people.  Sanctify the congregation; assemble the aged; gather the children, even infants at the breast.  Let the bridegroom leave his room, and the bride her canopy.  17Between the vestibule and the altar let the priests, the ministers of the Lord, weep.  Let them say, ‘Spare your people, O Lord, and do not make your heritage a mockery, a byword among the nations.  Why should it be said among the peoples, “Where is their God?”’
SOME BACKGROUND INFORMATION
In this passage, heart essentially means mind and will and thus our whole being.  The rhetorical question in v14 is not casting doubt on God’s willingness to forgive, but rather emphasizing God’s sovereignty and freedom.
MEDITATIVE WORDS
Lent begins with the Way of Purgation, that is with the call to come to God in confession and penitence for sin and return fully to our God, with our hearts—our thinking, feeling, willing and being.  We’re encouraged to return to God with a reminder of God’s character—“he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and relents from punishing.”  The call in Joel is not merely for the individual, but for the nation.  We are to repent as individuals but we are also to name the sins of our nation so that others don’t have to say about us, “Where is their God?”
REFLECTIVE WONDERING
Begin Lent with an examination of your own personal life; name your sins and receive the mercy of a gracious and merciful God.
RESPOND TO JESUS IN PRAYER. 
I confess to you Merciful God that I have sinned against you.  I have done what I know I shouldn’t have; I’ve failed to do what I know I should have done.  Help, Lord.  Amen.
BE SILENT AND STILL: For a few moments, simply be in the presence of Jesus, who loves you, regardless.
 
Thursday, March 2
PREPARE TO LISTEN: I call upon you, for you will answer me, O God; incline your ear to me, hear my words.
READ: Psalm 51:1-13
1 Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love;
according to your abundant mercy blot out my transgressions. 
2 Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin. 
3 For I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me. 
4 Against you, you alone, have I sinned, and done what is evil in your sight,
so that you are justified in your sentence and blameless when you pass judgement. 
5 Indeed, I was born guilty, a sinner when my mother conceived me. 
6 You desire truth in the inward being; therefore teach me wisdom in my secret heart. 
7 Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow. 
8 Let me hear joy and gladness; let the bones that you have crushed rejoice. 
9 Hide your face from my sins, and blot out all my iniquities. 
10 Create in me a clean heart, O God, and put a new and right spirit within me. 
11 Do not cast me away from your presence, and do not take your holy spirit from me. 
12 Restore to me the joy of your salvation, and sustain in me a willing spirit. 
13 Then I will teach transgressors your ways, and sinners will return to you. 
SOME BACKGROUND INFORMATION
This psalm is David’s prayer of confession for his sin of both adultery against Bathsheba and the arrangement of the murder of her husband, Uriah.
MEDITATIVE WORDS and PRAYERFUL RESPONSE
This is the most detailed of the penitential (confession and penitence) psalms and also the best known.  It is a prayer of confession that anyone, regardless of what sin they committed, can pray.  It was written as a confession of the sin of adultery and murder, but these words aren’t in the text and therefore anyone can claim this psalm of confession as their own.  I invite you to do so.  Read it again, this time as your prayer of confession and believe that God in Christ will indeed restore to you the joy of your salvation.
BE SILENT AND STILL: For a few moments, simply be in the presence of Jesus, who loves you, regardless.
 
Friday, March 3
PREPARE TO LISTEN: I call upon you, for you will answer me, O God; incline your ear to me, hear my words.
READ: 2 Corinthians 5:20-6:10
20So we are ambassadors for Christ, since God is making his appeal through us; we entreat you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.  21For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
1As we work together with him, we urge you also not to accept the grace of God in vain.  2For he says,
‘At an acceptable time I have listened to you, and on a day of salvation I have helped you.’  See, now is the acceptable time; see, now is the day of salvation!  3We are putting no obstacle in anyone’s way, so that no fault may be found with our ministry, 4but as servants of God we have commended ourselves in every way: through great endurance, in afflictions, hardships, calamities, 5beatings, imprisonments, riots, labours, sleepless nights, hunger; 6by purity, knowledge, patience, kindness, holiness of spirit, genuine love, 7truthful speech, and the power of God; with the weapons of righteousness for the right hand and for the left; 8in honour and dishonour, in ill repute and good repute.  We are treated as impostors, and yet are true; 9as unknown, and yet are well known; as dying, and see—we are alive; as punished, and yet not killed; 10as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, and yet possessing everything.
MEDITATIVE WORDS
“So we are ambassadors for Christ….  As we work together with him, we urge you also not to accept the grace of God in vain.”  We work together with Christ!  We’re not merely working for him, but with him.  Our work is to urge others to fully accept God’s amazing grace.  I listen to stories from many Christians and have discovered that the common theme is a struggle to receive and fully live in God’s grace.  One woman came to see me with this very struggle.  She was working so hard to earn God’s approval.  I urged her to give herself grace to fail and to receive God’s grace to help her.  She looked at me with tears in her eyes and said, ‘I can’t.’  I never saw her again, but often think of her tears and struggle to receive grace.  I urge you today, don’t accept God’s grace in vain.  Receive it with gratitude and enter into it fully.
REFLECTIVE WONDERING
What holds you back from giving yourself grace and from entering fully into the grace God freely gives?
RESPOND TO JESUS IN PRAYER. 
You are a God who delights to give me grace despite my undeserving nature.  Today, Gracious Lord, I choose to live as one who knows this grace.  When I fail, I’ll give myself grace and turn again to you with the help of your Spirit.  In grace, I dare to pray, amen.
BE SILENT AND STILL: For a few moments, simply be in the presence of Jesus, who loves you, regardless.
 
Saturday, March 4
PREPARE TO LISTEN: I call upon you, for you will answer me, O God; incline your ear to me, hear my words.
READ: Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21
1‘Beware of practising your piety before others in order to be seen by them; for then you have no reward from your Father in heaven.  2‘So whenever you give alms, do not sound a trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, so that they may be praised by others.  Truly I tell you, they have received their reward.  3But when you give alms, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, 4so that your alms may be done in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.  5‘And whenever you pray, do not be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, so that they may be seen by others.  Truly I tell you, they have received their reward.  6But whenever you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.
16‘And whenever you fast, do not look dismal, like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces so as to show others that they are fasting.  Truly I tell you, they have received their reward.  17But when you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face, 18so that your fasting may be seen not by others but by your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.  19‘Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal; 20but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal.  21For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
SOME BACKGROUND INFORMATION
Piety is a term used to refer to devotion to practicing religious acts of obedience to God.  Today, we mostly use the language of spiritual disciplines.
MEDITATIVE WORDS
It’s not easy to act secretly, especially when we’re doing something we know is good.  We want people to know; we want to impress others.  Apparently, Jesus isn’t in the business of impressing others and denounces such behavior.  He assumes we are practicing giving, prayer and fasting, the 3 foundational spiritual disciplines.  What mattered to Jesus was for whom we did them.  Doing them for God’s eyes only is storing up for yourself treasure in heaven.  Not obviously, doing these acts entirely secretly is impossible.  Of course, others will see and know.  It’s not about hiding our acts of piety from the world; it’s about doing them freely without the expectation of recognition from the world.  We do them for God and God alone.
REFLECTIVE WONDERING
Reflect on when, where and how you can practice these 3 acts of piety during Lent, then commit to a plan and pray for the help of the Spirit to stick to it.
RESPOND TO JESUS IN PRAYER.
Heavenly Father, your watchful eyes are ever on me, your generous nature is ever wanting to reward me.  Help me live today, practicing prayerfulness, generosity in giving and fasting from what controls me in order to please you and you alone.  In the name of Jesus who taught us by his own example.  Amen.
BE SILENT AND STILL: For a few moments, simply be in the presence of Jesus, who loves you, regardless.