Lenten Devotionals
Week 1 | Week 2 | Week 3 | Week 4 | Week 5| Week 6| Holy Week
Monday Feb 18
Scripture
Exodus 17:1-7
From the wilderness of Sin the whole congregation of the Israelites journeyed by stages, as the LORD commanded. They camped at Rephidim, but there was no water for the people to drink. The people quarreled with Moses and said, “Give us water to drink.” Moses said to them, “Why do you quarrel with me? Why do you test the LORD?” But the people thirsted there for water; and the people complained against Moses and said, “Why did you bring us out of Egypt, to kill us and our children and livestock with thirst?” So Moses cried out to the LORD, “What shall I do with this people? They are almost ready to stone me.” The LORD said to Moses, “Go on ahead of the people, and take some of the elders of Israel with you; take in your hand the staff with which you struck the Nile, and go. I will be standing there in front of you on the rock at Horeb. Strike the rock, and water will come out of it, so that the people may drink.” Moses did so, in the sight of the elders of Israel. He called the place Massah and Meribah, because the Israelites quarreled and tested the LORD, saying, “Is the LORD among us or not?”
Thought for the Day
I who erewhile the happy Garden sung,
By one man’s disobedience lost, now sing
Recover’d Paradise to all mankind,
By one man’s firm obedience fully tri’d
Through all temptation, and the Tempter foil’d
In all his wiles, defeated and repuls’t,
And Eden rais’d in the waste Wilderness.
-John Milton, Paradise Regained
When you’re fasting, you’re hungry and weak, and your character flaws often rise to the surface. When you’re fasting is a great time to pray for deliverance from your character flaws, to wrestle with God seeking to become a better person.
-Erin Driggers, leader of First UMC’s Bible,
Set, Revolution! small group.
Thought: In Lent, we’re in the desert with Israel: on a journey, trapped between God and our own unruliness; pursuing Jesus’ righteousness, harried by the devil. In the desert waste, reality is clear: God is the only water here.
Discuss, and close with the Lord’s prayer.
Tuesday 19 Feb
Scripture
From the wilderness of Sin the whole congregation of the Israelites journeyed by stages, as the LORD commanded. They camped at Rephidim, but there was no water for the people to drink. The people quarreled with Moses and said, “Give us water to drink.” Moses said to them, “Why do you quarrel with me? Why do you test the LORD?” But the people thirsted there for water; and the people complained against Moses and said, “Why did you bring us out of Egypt, to kill us and our children and livestock with thirst?”
-Exodus 17:1-3
Thought for the Day
What does it really mean to be human?
What does it really mean to be featherless
Two-legged linguistically conscious creatures
Born between urine and feces, whose bodies
Will soon be the culinary delight of terrestrial worms?
The death sentence of time and space—
And no-one of us getting outside of space and time alive—
Who will we be in the meantime?
How will we use our time?—
Or will time use us?—
It is time to come to terms with time.
-Cornel West, from “Chronomentrophobia”
You are dust, and to dust you will return.
-what good pastors tell you on Ash Wednesday
Everyone who drinks from this water will be thirsty again, but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.
-Jesus, to the woman at the well in John 4
Thought: In Lent, we can’t forget 2 things: we are dust, and we are thirsty. Those two things make us absolutely desperate. For problems as serious as those, Jesus is the only one who can save.
Discuss and close with the Lord’s prayer.
Wed 20 Feb
Scripture
The disciples were urging Jesus, “Rabbi, eat something.” But he said to them, “I have food to eat that you do not know about.” So the disciples said to one another, “Surely no one has brought him something to eat.” Jesus said to them, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to complete his work.”
-Jesus, in John 4
Thought for the Day
The early church father Gregory of Nyssa teaches us that the true fast is not only to abstain from food. Rather, the true fast is a withdrawing from the good fellowship of the table in order to pray—to fellowship and commune with God, our true Father who is in secret.
-Rev. Dr. Warren Smith, in sermon in Lent
Is it a fast like this which I choose, a day for a man to humble himself?
Is it for bowing one’s head like a reed, and for spreading out sackcloth and ashes as a bed?
Will you call this a fast, even an acceptable day to the LORD?
Is not this the fast that I choose,
To loosen the bonds of wickedness,
To undo the bands of the yoke,
And to let the oppressed go free and break every yoke?
Is it not to divide your bread with the hungry,
And bring the homeless poor into the house;
When you see the naked, to cover him;
And not to hide yourself from your own flesh?
Then your light will break out like the dawn,
And your recovery will speedily spring forth;
And your righteousness will go before you;
The glory of the LORD will be your rear guard.
-from chapter 58 of Isaiah’s prophecies
Training your mind for fasting is like training your mind as a distance runner.
-Jenny Pinkston, member of Selah Home
Fellowship “North” group
Discuss and close with the Lord’s prayer.
Thurs 21 Feb
Scripture
The people quarreled with Moses and said, “Give us water to drink.” Moses said to them, “Why do you quarrel with me? Why do you test the LORD?” But the people thirsted there for water; and the people complained against Moses and said, “Why did you bring us out of Egypt, to kill us and our children and livestock with thirst?” So Moses cried out to the LORD, “What shall I do with this people? They are almost ready to stone me.”
-Exodus 17:2-4
Thought for the Day
Laurana closed her eyes for a moment. She laid her head down wearily on her knees. Tanis, she thought, where are you? What should I do? Why is it up to me? I didn’t want this.
And then, as she sat there, Laurana remembered seeing weariness and sorrow on Tanis’s face that mirrored her own. Maybe he asked himself these same things. All the times I thought he was so strong, perhaps he really felt as lost and frightened as I do. Certainly he felt abandoned by his people. And we depended on him, whether he wanted us to or not. But he accepted it. He did what he believed was right.
And so must I.
-from The Dragons of Winter Night by
Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman
Thought: In Lent, in the parched desert, we are assaulted by our own weakness, and the weaknesses of those around us. We must remember to cry out to the LORD like Moses, to ask Jesus for living water like the woman at the well—for direction, for strength to keep on the journey. We must remember the words of the apostle James, that if we lack wisdom, we should ask God, who gives generously and without reproach, and God will give the wisdom.
Discuss and close with the Lord’s prayer.
Fri 22 Feb
So if I stand let me stand on the promise
That You will pull me through,
And if I can’t let me fall on the grace
That first brought me to You.
If I sing let me sing for the joy
That has born in me these songs,
But if I weep let it be as a man
Who is longing for his home.
-Rich Mullins, “If I Stand”
Scripture
Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand; and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God. And not only that, but we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us
For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. Indeed, rarely will anyone die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person someone might actually dare to die. But God proves his love for us in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us. Much more surely then, now that we have been justified by his blood, will we be saved through him from the wrath of God. For if while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more surely, having been reconciled, will we be saved by his life. But more than that, we even boast in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.
-St. Paul, in Romans 5
Discuss and close with the Lord’s prayer.
Sat 23 Feb
Scripture
O that today you would listen to God’s voice! Do not harden your hearts, as at Meribah, as on the day at Massah in the wilderness, when your ancestors tested me, and put me to the proof, thought they had seen my work. For forty years I loathed that generation and said, “They are a people whose hearts go astray, and they do not regard my ways.” Therefore in my anger I swore, “They shall not enter my rest.”
-from Psalm 95
Thought for the Day
Modern Liberalism is the story that you should have no story but the story you chose when you had no story. But who taught you that story?
-Stanley Hauerwas
Thought: Lent is about being in the wilderness, about purifying our hearts and lives to follow God, like Israel, like our exemplar Jesus Christ. Lent is not about customizing a comfortable (but appropriately challenging) spirituality to add to our lives. Lent is about not having a hard heart to the story—the reality—that the gospel reveals we are living through. Lent does not so much call us to make certain choices as it calls us to convert, and convert wholeheartedly. As a singing people, we confess that God is the one telling our story, and we are simply at our best when we embrace the call of the gospel, because that is the plot of the story God is telling.
Sickness makes it impossible to avoid the reality of our bodies. When I am sick I am not a mind with a suffering body, but I am the suffering body. Illness may be the only time that we have the opportunity to discover that we are part of a story that we did not make up.
-Stanley Hauerwas, from Sanctify Them in the Truth
Discuss and close with the Lord’s prayer.
Sunday 24 Feb
Scripture
The woman said to him, “Sir, I see that you are a prophet. Our ancestors worshipped on this mountain, but you say that the place where people must worship is in Jerusalem.” Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such as these to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.”
-from John 4
Bow down before the one you serve
You’re going to get what you deserve.
-Nine Inch Nails
O come, let us sing to the LORD; let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation!
Let us come into his presence with thanksgiving; let us make a joyful noise to him with songs of praise! For the LORD is a great God, and a great king above all gods. In his hands are the depths of the earth; the heights of the mountains are his also. The sea is his, for he made it, and the dry land, which his hands have formed. O come, let us worship and bow down, let us kneel before the LORD, our Maker! For he is our God, and we are the people of his pasture, and the sheep of his hand.
-from Psalm 95
Thought: In Lent, we’re reminded that we must bow down to a God who is higher than us. We are dust, and God is our Maker. We are dust, and God is our shepherd in the wilderness. We are dust, and we’ve been given the power to bow down to a great many things in this world. But let us sing, and bow down to God.
Discuss and close with the Lord’s prayer.
