changing perceptions
I wrote recently that I’m working through Maggi Dawn’s Giving it up for Lent. It’s a series of Daily Bible Readings from Ash Wednesday to Easter Day and it’s really good. Not easy but good.
Elsewhere Maggi writes
Lent is about everyday matters: about re-grounding ourselves in the knowledge of our humanity, and our dependence upon God. And it is about living each day, in this earthed place, in a thoroughly human way. Not as superheroes, nor subhuman. Just being properly human, one day at a time.
I like that perspective don’t you?
In the book I’m on chapter three (third full week of Lent) which is entitled Changing Perceptions. It’s excellent. It’s meeting me right where I am because as I started lent I needed a fresh revelation of who God is and how I fit into the grand scheme of things.
The first three entries (Sun-Tues) this week are taken from Luke 15 – the chapter, you might remember, subtitled lost and found. It’s probably my favourite chapter in the NT and certainly God has used the narrative of the Prodigal Son again and again in my life to reveal who He is and How much He loves me.
Maggi though really opened up the second of the stories (the one about the lost sheep) to me this week. She reminded me that the 99 were actually not in danger (they were looked after by the other shepherds) but rather that it was the shepherd himself who put his life at risk when he went out to look for the one who had gone missing. That’s a real picture of what Jesus did for you and me- for all humanity though many fail to grasp that -as Maggi puts it
It’s a movement of ultimate personal risk for the sake of something lost almost beyond hope
And it’s really got me thinking.
I like Lent and this book has really been helping me in my journey with and to God.
(cross posted over at into the Bible)
