LIVING, LEARNING & LOVING during LENT
Lenten devotionals for March and April. We will focus on a different concept each day of the week: Sundays: Resting/Taking Sabbath Mondays: Fasting Tuesdays: Giving Wednesdays: Serving Thursdays: Praying Fridays: Studying/Learning Saturdays: Celebrating/Playing.
March 7 (Friday – Studying/Learning)
- Scripture: Romans 12:2 – Do not be conformed to this age, but be transformed by the renewing of the mind, so that you may discern what is the will of God—what is good and acceptable and perfect.
- Reflection: Studying wisdom texts, including Biblical scripture, helps attune our intellects and our hearts with God’s will. The Torah and the law and prophets, and the Gospels and letters of Paul, all the collected books of the Bible, have much to tell us. We are blessed to be life-long learners, if we choose.
Yet we can have other sources of inspiration and revelation. God also offers enlightenment through our own lived experiences. God continues to speak through the first holy text, which is the world around us, created by God. Other sources of learning include the messages of contemporary prophets and artists, the scholarship of modern thinkers and teachers, and the examples and lessons of inspiring public figures.
Who inspires you to learn and grow in these times? Who are you watching, reading, or listening to right now, who informs and influences you in positive ways? - Spiritual Practice Prompt: Who is one person who inspires you, and how does their writing, research, or artistry connect with the practice of renewing your mind? What is one phrase or idea that you have learned that helps you? Share it in conversation today. or post it to social media. Inspire someone else, as you have been inspired.
Songs:
- Anything’s Possible by Lea Michele: https://youtu.be/PSjgSH60l5s?si=iahyizZSYuJoRTqt
- Rule the World by Walk Off the Earth: https://youtu.be/ukigjUvwAR4?si=WfaoTqMDrTANWqSh
- Just Hold On by Steve Aoki & Louis Tomlinson: https://youtu.be/Vt4Tq89R8u0?si=l04HbsEUDPrOCizl
- Open the Eyes of My Heart by Paul Baloche: https://youtu.be/ViBNqNukgzE?si=NwdOxWcrVXQIDniz
Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire ― William Butler Yeats
Intellectual growth should commence at birth and cease only at death.― Albert Einstein
You’ll never know everything about anything, especially something you love.― Julia Child
From ‘The Book of Camp Branch’, Wendell Berry, in This Day. Collected and New Sabbath Poems
A changing song,
a changing walk,
a changing thought.
A sounding stone,
a stopping stone,
a word
that is a sounding and a stepping
stone.
A language that is a stream flowing
and is a man’s thoughts as he
walks and thinks beside a stream.
His thoughts will hold
if the words will hold, if each
is a weight-bearing stone
placed by the flow
in the flow. The language too
descends through time, subserving
false economy, heedless power,
blown with the gas of salesmanship,
rattled with the sale of a needless war,
worn by the mere unhearing
babble of thoughtlessness,
and must return to its own
downward flow by the flowing
water, the muttered syllables,
the measureless music, the stream
flowing and singing, the man
walking and thinking, balanced
on unsure footholds
in the flowing stream.
March 7 Lenten Devotional