Saturday, February 16, 2013

 

 

Joel 2:1-2, 12-17; Psalm 51:1-17; 2 Cor. 5:20b-6:10; Matt. 6:1-6, 16-21

 

Matthew 6:19 "Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth,… but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven…For where your treasure is, there your heart is also."

            For forty days Jesus was tempted, for forty years the Israelites wandered in the desert, for forty days and forty nights Moses was on the mountain of Sinai. If you have a concordance of the Bible, look up the word “forty” and see the remarkable number of passages with that number. What is the significance of all these forty years, forty days, forty nights? Lent is a period of forty days (not including Sundays), roughly one-tenth - a tithe - of a year, that we give over to a discipline of prayer for the good of the spirit, fasting for the good of the body, acts of love for the good of neighbor, that we may reconsider what exactly it is that we treasure above all things, that we may, as Richard Rohr says, "live our way into a new way of thinking."

 

Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me. Amen

 

• Invite friends or family to bake pretzels (see recipe).