Monthly Archives: March 2013

Wednesday, Third Week in Lent

The reading today is tough but is it literal or just a guide? I find this hard to believe but I am still on a journey.

“… not one dot, not one little stroke, shall disappear from the law until its purpose is achieved.” Matthew 5:17-19

Tuesday, Third Week in Lent

The story about the servant being forgiven and not forgiving always leads to a slight guilty conscience. It looks like we will all be handed over to the torturers because how can we keep this rule.

“… And that is how my heavenly Father will deal with you unless you each forgive your brother from your heart.” (Matthew 18: 21-35)

Monday, Third Week in Lent

The long reading about Naman passed over me gently. But what arrested my attention was the Psalm:

“My soul is thirsting for God, the God of my life. When can I enter and see the face of God.”

There are these moments when something chides; this was just such a time.

Third Sunday in Lent

The Lenten hymns in the Abbey Church never fail to move, like ‘Think on Me’. But as I went for a long walk after the words of another hymn, “When I Survey the Wondrous Cross”, came coming back to me.

At first I could only feel for the words. One by one they came back and I had to check the last couple at Vespers, but in a way this hymn contains everything, an antidote to our self-obsession. “My greatest gain I count but loss.”

Saturday, Second Week in Lent

A wonderfully sunny day: spring weather at last.

I walked along the edge of the wolds to the church of Normanby le Wold. It is the highest church in Lincolnshire, at 447 feet. Heavily restored by Fowler, fallen into dilapidation before.

Named Normanby after the Norse rather than Danish community that settled here in the ninth century, with some fine Victorian paintings. We have one from the same artist in Stainton le Vale. What a gorgeous setting and a tonic for depression.

Friday, Second Week of Lent

I was in Lincoln for the Cathedral Council. Attending Eucharist at 12:30, I looked and stared at the vast east window soaring up in giddy magnificence and, there too, the maquette of the new statue of the Virgin Mary, a re-creation of an ancient source of pilgrimage.

“It was the stone rejected by the builders that became the keystone.”