Using This Journal

This Lenten season we invite you into prayer. At their best these journals always strive to do just that: call us to prayer, prompt us in prayer, and guide us toward a deeper life of prayer. That might look like some quiet solitary moments at the start or close of the day, or maybe its with a trusted friend, or perhaps some intentional time as a family to enter into these words together.

There are six prayer reflections to guide you through the season. These can be taken at whatever pace is fitting for you. It corressponds to one for each week of Lent, but it would also work to go back and repeat them if you go at a faster rate. Take them in and let your mind and your spirit be open to where the Holy Spirit might be leading you. A big thank-you is in order to Molly Kehrer for crafting these beautiful reflections and prompts.

Blake Johnson created a stunningly vivid work of art inspired by our theme verses Luke 9.58-62. Blake offered this reflecting on his piece, “There seem to be two similar/different sides of the idea of ‘considering the cost.’ One is that we’d turn our faces and leave something behind, and another is that we would stay & labor within a particular framework or set of boundaries. As Christians we are bound to certain rituals and liturgies. Bound to certain hopes. We plant seeds in fields but we don’t make them grow. We wait, we pray, we repent, we forgive, we die, and we are reborn.” Thank you, Blake for this expression of your Christian imagination.

As Pastor Jon wrote, the image of the plough worker is one that not all of us are intimately familar with. So as a way to invite us deeper into that, in addition to Blake’s piece, there are several other pieces depicting a plough or someone working a field from art history. Use these as further tools for prayer. Consider the different expressions, the colors, the textures and how it might draw you into the story of Jesus this season.

The Lord be with you,
Jonathan Gabhart