Dear Friends, As I was preparing for the season of Lent I came upon a \u2018Charlie Brown\u2019 cartoon which has little Linus, looking very forlorn, asking Lucy, \u2018Why are you always so anxious to criticize me?\u2019 Lucy looking very self-righteous replies: \u2018I just think I have the knack for seeing other people\u2019s faults\u2019. Linus turns indignant; \u2018What about your own faults?\u2019 he asks. \u2018I have a knack for overlooking them\u2019 answers Lucy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Well, we have now entered the forty days of Lent and by church\u00a0tradition we are challenged to spend the period in self-examination and\u00a0self-denial.\u00a0 The aim being that the forty days are sufficiently long enough to help us change all but the most deeply rooted habits. It is like spiritual\u00a0aerobics where the Christian tones up on their spiritual life. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Lent can be thought of in negative terms if it is about \u2018giving things up\u2019 and no doubt there will be aspects of our lives which need close\u00a0inspection.\u00a0 Time spent with God and reflecting on our lives are always rich and fruitful.\u00a0 Lent is a time to hear and believe that God loves us, and then spend at least forty days attempting to find out what that means. Jesus was sent into the desert to face his temptations straight after his\u00a0\u00a0 baptism in the river Jordan.\u00a0 It was just after being baptized by John that a voice was heard from God that said to Jesus \u2018you are my Son, with whom I am well pleased\u2019.\u00a0 For Jesus he knew he was truly the Son of God and loved by his Father. When Jesus heard God\u2019s words, he set out to a place of quiet and solitude, the desert, so that he could think and pray about them. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
At the heart of the Christian story is the belief that God made the world and everything in it out of love. Jesus came to live and die for us so that we can understand God\u2019s words to him as being meant for us too \u2018You are my beloved daughters and sons; you give me pleasure\u2019. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Going into the desert isn\u2019t an option for most of us, but perhaps we can make a little time during Lent to try think about what our lives are for. And that might mean giving up, at least for a bit, some of the things that distract us, so that we can focus better on the essentials of what life is all about and our place in God\u2019s marvellous world. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
May your Lent devotions help you experience God\u2019s love for you in a deeper and more profound way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Rev Glenn Coggins, <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Vicar of the United Benefice of Stanley, Outwood and Wrenthorpe and Alverthorpe.<\/em><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Dear Friends, As I was preparing for the season of Lent I came upon a \u2018Charlie Brown\u2019 cartoon which has little Linus, looking very forlorn, asking Lucy, \u2018Why are you always so anxious to criticize me?\u2019 Lucy looking very self-righteous replies: \u2018I just think I have the knack for seeing other people\u2019s faults\u2019. Linus turns […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":1005,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"Phone_number(s)":"","email_address":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3,35],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1402","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-letters","category-more-pages"],"mb":[],"mfb_rest_fields":["title"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nwbchurches.org.uk\/stanley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1402","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nwbchurches.org.uk\/stanley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nwbchurches.org.uk\/stanley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nwbchurches.org.uk\/stanley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nwbchurches.org.uk\/stanley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1402"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nwbchurches.org.uk\/stanley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1402\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1403,"href":"https:\/\/nwbchurches.org.uk\/stanley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1402\/revisions\/1403"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nwbchurches.org.uk\/stanley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1005"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nwbchurches.org.uk\/stanley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1402"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nwbchurches.org.uk\/stanley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1402"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nwbchurches.org.uk\/stanley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1402"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}