lent – Page 15 – thelifeididntchoose

Lenten Reflections: Fasting Spectatorship-Choosing to Participate

How many of you enjoy looking at Pinterest or other idea generating Internet sites? How many of the ideas you’ve saved have ever resulted in actual projects?

I think spectatorship has been elevated to an entirely new level with social media.

It’s easy to do in real life too! I can stand by and watch others getting involved and making a difference and convince my heart that’s the same thing as doing something.

When I allow my heart to fully embrace what God may be doing in and through those around me I’m safe from the temptation to simply sit on the sidelines like a fan and not a participant.

But when I take a step back, begin to analyze whether or not what I’m seeing, hearing and experiencing is “acceptable” or “predictable” or “within bounds” then I become a spectator and critic.

It’s not always wrong to do a little bit of analysis before being swept up in the mood of a crowd-many of those who shouted, “Hosanna!” on (what we call Palm Sunday) shouted, “Crucify Him!” not even a week later.

Still, if I’m always sitting outside of experience, analyzing and categorizing, I’m likely to miss much of what God may be doing in the moment.

So today, try not to be too analytical, too critical, too attentive to the fonts, images and perfect social media presence.

Just listen to the Holy Spirit. Be led by the Spirit. Be in rhythm with the Spirit.

Today, fast spiritual spectatorship. Enter into worship. When considerations start turning into hesitations about something Jesus is clearly at the center of, throw hypercaution to the wind, and celebrate Jesus with abandon.
Alicia Britt Chole

**As promised, I am sharing thoughts on 40 DAYS OF DECREASE (a Lenten journal/devotional). If you choose to get and use the book yourself, I’ll be a day behind in sharing so as not to influence anyone else’s experience.*

Lenten Reflections: Fasting Isolation, Choosing Community

It’s particularly unfortunate that the term chosen for physically distancing ourselves during the recent pandemic was “social distancing”. Because we are not created to remain socially distant/isolated from other human beings.

The toll shows. Elderly folks stuck behind doors, unable to talk freely and often with others withered away from isolation as often as the virus. It’s become obvious that children have suffered as well.

ALL of us need connection.

It doesn’t necessarily have to happen in a crowd. It doesn’t even have to be in person anymore (although that’s preferable).

As long as we can see one another, read body language, hear tone and bounce conversation back and forth, life-giving connection can happen.

Today, then, fast isolation. Meet a friend for coffee, call a cousin, visit a neighbor, or connect with a colleague. Purpose to link and be linked, to need and be needed, to see and be seen. Refuse to discount your influence, especially in small acts, and intentionally nurture your God-given web of relationships.
Alicia Britt Chole

Those of us who belong to Christ are connected ultimately by His grace, His blood and His Spirit.

We only have to reach out and embrace that connection to be refreshed and renewed. (Even if reaching out is virtual!)

Lenten Reflections: Welcoming Those Whom Jesus Loves

If I read the Gospels and really put myself in the story, I would have to admit that I may well have wanted to “protect” Jesus from some of those that sought His help and His blessing.

It’s easy to fall into the trap of deciding who might be worthy of God’s time and attention.

The disciples decided Jesus was too busy and too important for children to be brought near. Our gentle Shepherd not only welcomed the little ones but told his followers that they must all become as children.

How often do I undervalue someone else’s Christ encounter because it isn’t expressed in eloquent or even coherent words?

How often do I minimize the power of grace and mercy to change a heart or a life because the changes I expect or want to see aren’t the ones I can observe and fit neatly into categories?

Religious profiling is a thing, y’all.

We tend to interpret others’ experiences in light of our own and the traditions with which we are familiar and comfortable. When someone comes to us with a tale of an authentic spiritual encounter that falls outside those boundaries, it’s easy to dismiss it.

Imagine Moses walking back home after meeting God in the burning bush and trying to explain THAT to those he lived with!

It’s not my place to authenticate or validate how the Lord chooses to work in another person’s life and heart.

As long as what they share is consistent with Scripture I should welcome them as Jesus does.

Whom do we spiritually underestimate? The elderly? The young? The poor? The wealthy? The beautiful? The disabled? What group or class of people would we have turned away from Jesus?….Today ask God to shine His light upon any form of religious profiling in which you are dismissing those Jesus would welcome.
Alicia Britt Chole

This video and song are particularly dear to my heart. William Wilberforce fought for the abolition of slavery in Britain for most of his adult life.

He was considered lots of things-crazy among them-but stayed the course in spite of illness, discouragement and seeming failure because he was convinced God had called him to the task.

Many well-meaning Christians questioned whether or not he had really heard from the Lord.

Hindsight makes it clear they were wrong.

Lenten Reflections: Letting Go of Avoidance and Choosing to Engage

Uncertainty is quite revealing. The unknown triggers different reactions in different hearts and exposes our souls’ defaults. Ambiguity reveals where we instinctively go to feel the illusion of security again.
Alicia Britt Chole

Wow! Can I identify with this!

One of the things I’ve learned in this life I didn’t choose is that the earthquake of child loss revealed all the weak spots in my character and my faith.

When faced with uncertainty and lack of control, I desperately want to bring order to my wildly disordered world.

But faith (real faith) requires I be willing to embrace mystery.

I have got to face the FACT that I do not understand everything God is doing or allowing. I can’t pretend it’s not happening.

I can’t ignore the discomfort the unknown births in my soul.

Avoidance is never a long-term solution in any relationship-not my relationship with the Lord or my relationship with others.

Today, pay attention to avoidance mechanisms that surface when you face the unknown, unknowable, uncomfortable, or unavoidable…Ask God’s Holy Spirit to sensitize you today to the existence of avoidance defaults in your life. Prayerfully consider what beliefs might underlie any avoidance that emerges when you are facing uncertainty.
Alicia Britt Chole

Lenten Reflections: Embracing Mystery-I Don’t Have to Understand Everything

There have always been those who tried to reduce faith to something completely comprehensible.

But even a cursory reading of God’s Word and a casual experience with His ways makes that laughable.

When Jesus began teaching His disciples more and more about the Kingdom of God and His role as Christ, they were confused and dismayed. When I read His words they are still challenging and sometimes obscure even though I live on the other side of the resurrection.

Not everything can be explained.

When I insist on living life fully within the edges of rational thought, I not only miss out on many wonderful and inexplicable experiences, I also reduce my relationship with Jesus to rules.

If I am to fully embrace and inhabit the Kingdom life He has for me, I must be willing to embrace and inhabit the mysterious space between what I can know and understand and what I must trust I will one day know and understand (perhaps not until eternity!).

Thankfully, human reasoning neither leads nor limits God’s love. Consider passages in Scripture in which God’s words escape your understanding. What would it be like if God withheld His voice until humankind could fully comprehend it?
Alicia Britt Chole

Today’s fast is rationalism-letting go of a need to understand the mysterious, to insist on circumscribing God’s work in the world by human understanding and dismissing anything I can’t comprehend as immaterial or inconsequential.

How have you limited God’s love and work in your life by clinging to rationalism?

How can you let go and “let God”?

Take ten minutes to sit quietly with the Lord and allow Him to fill you with His Presence without demanding explanations.

Rest in Who He is and let His love overwhelm your heart.

Lenten Reflections: Letting Go of the Need to “Fix It”, Making Space To Watch God Work

As a people-pleasing firstborn pseudo-control-freak I’m all about fixing it.

I’m pretty sure I chose Psychology as one of my college majors because I figured it would better equip me to fix relationships around me.

But life intervened with first smaller unfixable crises and then the ultimate no-way-on-earth-to-fix-it death of Dominic. So I’m not nearly as inclined toward even trying now as I was a few years ago.

Still, I can find myself falling into the old habit of offering up advice instead of offering an ear. I might quickly delve unasked into my own experience and silence a heart that simply needs to be heard. I may well toss out trite “reasons” that “explain” why awful visited my friend while God seemed silent.

Part of the compulsion results from the author’s observation:

The church in general panics when miracles miscarry. We scurry clumsily about to prop up God’s sagging reputation. There must have been a problem, we offer. God must have something even better around the corner, we propose. Must He? Here, then is my Lenten plea for the day: let the mourning mourn. Grant those who grieve the dignity to ask questions. Bestow upon the bewildered permission to not edit their honesty.
Alicia Britt Chole

Recall miracles that ended in heartbreak…when, if ever, have you felt the need to “prop up God’s sagging reputation”?

How might you choose a different approach that grants grace and space to those who mourn?

Lenten Reflections: Making Room for Spiritual Hunger

“Revelations are often followed by trials. Perhaps they are preparation for them.” ~Alicia Britt Chole

My greatest trial has been the sudden death of my son, Dominic.

Just before he was killed in April, 2014 I wrapped up a multi-year slow walk through Scripture. What began as a discipline intended to force my heart to really focus and digest words I’d read so often they had (in some ways) become stale, ended up with me copying out nearly every chapter of the Bible into my journals.

I learned so much, received so much and was full to the brim of revelation and truth.

That was a good thing because when Dom died it was a long time before I could open my Bible on a regular basis and feast on the Word.

But my heart was still full and I was able to hold fast to hope that had been planted, nurtured and strengthened in the years before.

Today’s fast is a familiar one.

Most adults have skipped a meal for one reason or another. Don’t let this skipped meal fall into the “have to”, “hope to lose a few pounds” or “holier than thou” category those might have been.

Instead try this (as suggested in the book): In the time you would have eaten the meal you are fasting, read Revelation 22:1-16 and then read verse 17 slowly several times.

Allow your physical hunger to inform a spiritual longing for our Bridegroom.

Lenten Reflections: Refusing To Speed Past Sorrow

There are several recorded incidents where Jesus withdrew seeking solitude and solace.

One of them is upon hearing of John’s beheading at the hands of Herod.

If we accept that our Shepherd was a perfect model in all things (and I do!) then this is a model for dealing with sorrow and loss.

There have been specific individuals instructed by the Lord to ignore mourning (always for a prophetic purpose) but the general pattern in Scripture is to make room for the necessary work of processing grief.

So today’s fast is speeding past sorrow.

So often those of us who have wounded hearts are pushed by ourselves, by friends and family, and by a “look on the bright side” society to rush past our sorrow and sadness. But that is not only futile, it’s unhealthy.

While time, by itself, does not heal all wounds. Time is a necessary component of healing.

As much as we might wish it otherwise, there is no speedy way to wrap up the bits of a broken heart. Speeding past sorrow only means it festers, not that it is magically erased or truly forgotten.

It has been brutal, time-consuming and energy-intensive to force my heart to sit with the sorrow of Dominic’s death.

But every moment and every effort has borne fruit.

Jesus said, “Truly, truly I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains alone. But if it dies, it bears much fruit.” (John 12: 24)

In many ways active grieving is it’s own kind of death and that may be why we often run from it.

Bring to mind the names and faces of loved ones who have died. What deposits did they make in your life? How did you feel when you first learned of their deaths?…Today, honor the losses in your life. Instead of speeding past sadness, slow down and be present to your emotions. With Jesus, sit with your sorrow and let loss do its eternal work in your soul.
Alicia Britt Chole

Some of us are very vocal with our grief and some suffer in silence.

Either is perfectly normal.

The important thing is to face it.

Lenten Reflections: Making Space for Authentic Faith

In Jewish culture, “It’s an act of reverence to ask questions of the story. The Jews are confident that the story is strong enough to be tried and tested….Around the table, a Jewish child has ‘That’s a good question!’ drummed into his or her soul, not ‘You don’t ask that question’…Questions are a sacred as answers.” (Dr. Leonard Sweet)

If you’ve read a single word I’ve written in the past seven years you know how close this truth is to my heart!

I think we do a disservice to ourselves and others when we reduce the complexities of Scripture to something like Aesop’s Fables. Real people lived real lives and had real questions. The Almighty God is big enough to handle them.

We weaken-not strengthen- our faith when we silence sincere questions. Faith in Christ is not an airy substance that rests on unquestioning souls. Biblical faith is muscular, thickened more through trials than ease. The Author of our faith is more than able to address the identity crises His unexpected words and ways may trigger.
Alicia Britt Chole

I am so thankful for the long but often underappreciated record of God’s people bringing their questions to Him.

The Bible is not propaganda, scrubbed clean of any references to experience that might undermine a preordained “message”. It’s a faithful rendering of human hearts wooed by our Shepherd, of hard things, hard sayings and wrestling with sin and with faith.

My story is messy.

My faith has places torn and mended. I still have questions. If God is God (and I believe that He is) then He is not threatened by my queries. He doesn’t owe me an explanation and I accept that. But I believe He welcomes my honesty.

So today I’m fasting tidy faith.

Have you lived with the false mantra: ” I know we aren’t supposed to question God” ?

What do you want/need to ask Him?

Use a concordance to find someone in Scripture who already has.

Lenten Reflections: Making Space For REAL Light

Today’s fast is artificial light.

Without reading ahead I kind of stepped on today’s reflection. Chole describes John’s prison questions this way: “the distance between what John thought Jesus would do and what Jesus actually did was straining John’s certainty of who Jesus was.”

Oh, my! How well I can identify with this feeling!

I’ve told anyone who will listen that when Dominic was killed I dragged a lifetime of what I thought I knew and understood about God into the light of child loss. It absolutely strained my certainty of who Jesus is.

And my questions made some folks uncomfortable just as John’s question makes some Bible teachers uncomfortable.

Too often we want to shush or shout down the hearts that are simply trying to make some sense of things that neither make sense nor seem (on the surface) to reflect the loving heart of a Faithful Father.

A key invitation of our spiritual journeys is to be emotionally honest about our uncertainties. Questions such as the one asked by John are signs of a living, growing, active faith, not evidence of a dying one. Jesus’ calm response to John echoes to us today: ‘Recall what I have done in the past. Accept me as the Great I Am of your future.’
Alicia Britt Chole

Hebrews chapter 11 is known as the “Hall of Faith”.

For today’s Lenten exercise, Chole suggests laying aside screens and electric lights to read that chapter by candlelight this evening.

I highly recommend it! Do it aloud if you are able.

Speaking the names, the circumstances, the journeys of those whose hearts trusted the heart of the Lord who made them and who led them but who also allowed hardship, disappointment and even death, is breathtaking and heartbreaking.

But it puts my life in context of His bigger story.

Redemption, restoration, re-creation and the ultimate Sabbath rest of eternal glory and perfect relationship.

God needs nothing, asks nothing and demands nothing, like the stars. It is life with God which demands these things…. You do not have to sit outside in the dark. If, however you want to look at the stars, you will find that the darkness is necessary. But the stars neither require it nor demand it.
Annie Dillard

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this: