A Holy Lent...

I found this at Lent and Beyond where you can go to be refreshed and blessed with LOTS of scripture, meditations and thought for prayer!

Yesterday, I decided just to have a quiet day with little media input (except necessary email) to start my Lenten observance. It was a very different sort of day, as Ash Wednesday usually is, but I did realize how much I look to the internet for news and to distract from the daily routine.  I am certainly not saying that it is bad or wrong to be involved in media, and blogging requires a certain amount of time to check out what's going on, but it was interesting how much more time I spent just thinking and praying in between my work and errands.  No big revelation here, of course, just a personal head's up for me. -PD

Raymond wrote this today:
Today is the day after Ash Wednesday, and the start of Lent. If there be any lesson on Ash Wednesday, it is that to focus on God rather than on self is the key to our happiness. It is oh so easy to look to ourselves, and to see our needs, our desires, our spiritual life.

We do not fulfill these with this inward looking. The Eastern philosophy of Buddhism looks for fulfillment within, and they take it as an article of faith that to look inward to yourself is the way to salvation. That is the wrong direction to look. Only when we look out to God, and not into ourselves, can we find fulfillment. God is not in us in that sense, but rather outside of us and beyond us. He will give us his Holy Spirit to be in us, but even then he is wholly different and other.

I can take no thought of basking in the light of God in me when I am filled with the Spirit. Even those moments, or perhaps especially in those moments, I look to him who is beyond me. The more I look inward as a way of self-improvement, the more I shall fail. But when I sit in my morning prayer and see God’s face and call on his name, and especially see it in the guise of Jesus, then and only then will my heart truly be satisfied.  -Raymond Dague

My faith looks up to thee,

Thou Lamb of Calvary,
Saviour divine!

Now hear me while I pray;

Take all my guilt away;

O let me from this day
 Be wholly thine.!

May thy rich grace impart

Strength to my fainting heart,

My zeal inspire;

As Thou hast died for me.

O may my love to Thee

Pure, warm and changeless be,

A living fire.

While life's dark maze I tread,

And griefs around me spread,

Be Thou my guide;

Bid darkness turn to day,

Wipe sorrow's tears away,

Nor let me ever stray
 From Thee aside.

When ends life's transient dream,

When death's cold, sullen stream

Shall o'er me roll,

Blest Saviour, then, in love,

Fear and distrust remove;

O bear me safe above,

A ransomed soul.

 -Ray Palmer

My prayer is for a Blessed and Holy Lent

for all the readers of this blog! -PD