Wednesday, March 25, 2009

The Week of Prayer

In this Lenten season, we are engaged in acts of love that have the power to reconcile us with God and neighbor. This week is the week of prayer. Frederick Buechner, one of my favorite writers, in Listening to Your Life, asks a series of questions designed to help us think about where we have been and where we are going. I am thinking these questions over, and I pass them on to you, hoping that one or more will spur your thinking.
When you look at your face in the mirror, what do you see in it that you most like and what do you see in it that you most deplore?
If you had only one last message to leave to the handful of people who are most important to you, what would it be, in twenty-five words or less?
Of all the things you have done in your life, which is the one you would most like to undo? Which is the one that makes you happiest to remember?
Is there any person in the world, or any cause, that if circumstances called for it, you would be willing to die for?
If this were the last day of your life, what would you do with it?
Frederick Buechner goes on to say: To hear yourself try to answer questions like these is to begin to hear something not only of who you are but of both what you are failing to become. It can be a pretty depressing business, all in all, but if sack cloth and ashes are at the start of it, something like Easter may be at the end." That is the hope that can be found if we walk this journey with Christ. My prayers are with you as you pray intentionally this week.

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