Lent 2023; First Sunday of Lent

Lent 2023;  First Sunday of Lent

Ok, you’ve come to the beginning of a journey towards holiness.  What is guiding your quest to experience, live, and share with the world a renewed, and for some a new, approach to finding the reality of abstaining from meaningless attractions?  

It isn’t what you read, hear, or feel that will answer that question.  The very essence of living for God is a knowledge of just who Christ is within our persona.  

Preparation to discover and understand what this 40 day interruption of our normal lives should become a reawakening within a subdued spirit that needs to be shaken.  

As we search the scriptures Isaiah opens the very depth of God’s calling him at a time when Israel was in danger of collapse.  It seems that the northern and southern kingdoms were and still are in turmoil and threatened disaster until Isaiah was sent by God.

We might say this was nearly 3,000 years ago (around 722 B. C.) what does that have to do in 2023 A. D.?  Everything!  As all of us are encountering our nation’s present condition with the threat of war, a distorted guidance of government control, and the immoral teaching of our children in public schools, there is an imperative need for change.  Without God’s Grace we are in dire straits.

During this period of prayer and fasting we need to look at what the early prophets used to seek and find God’s answer to correcting some of the most horrendous events of their time and apply them to our present time of Lent.

The most astounding sections of the prophet Isaiah are found in the four Suffering Servant songs.  “The Liberator of Israel”   “Keep silence before me, O coastlands; you peoples, wait for my words!  Let them draw near and speak; let us come together for judgment.”   (Is 41: 1).

Song one!  “The servant of the Lord”  “Here is my servant whom I uphold, my chosen one with whom I am pleased, upon whom I have put my spirit; he shall bring forth justice to the nations, not crying out, not shouting, not making his voice heard in the street.  A bruised reed he shall not break, and a smoldering wick he shall not quench, until he establishes justice on the earth; the coastlands will wait for his teaching.”  (Is. 42: 1 - 4).  Compare Matthew with the baptism of Jesus:  “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.”  (Mt. 3: 17).

Ralph B. Hathaway