Dear Friend

How is your journey through Lent progressing? For me it is a little spasmodic but the challenges thrown up in the reflections booklet are certainly providing solid fodder for thought and action and making me think more purposefully about some of my attitudes and paradigms.

Sometimes as I walk in the mornings I listen to Charles Swindoll’s program “Insight for Living” on Southern Star and one day this week the question came through (my summary) “what is your source of truth, of wisdom, and of principles for living?” Swindoll was making the point that for Christians it must be Scripture, not some person’s experience or “revelation” or even the common understanding, but rather the Word of God. 

When it comes to matters such as justice, discrimination, exploitation, etc what does Scripture say about our approach to them?  That is sometimes not easily determined but that should not deter us from putting in the hard work required to find out. The same goes for gaining an understanding of and forming responses to questions and statements coming to us about God and earthquakes.

The road of Lent may be tortuous for mind, body, and spirit, but then it was like that for Jesus as he walked the weeks leading to The Cross.

I pray you will know much joy when celebrating the resurrection of Jesus later in April so that the bewilderment of this year’s Lenten journey transitions to hope arising from rekindled faith.