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No Short Cuts
While I enjoyed looking at these art stations and reading their proposed symbolism, I found them to be lacking in that relationship. The temporal vision seems to be more ME and Jesus, rather than JESUS and me.
I find this to be true with other modernistic devotionals as well. In an effort to be seen as ecumenical we often throw out or dismiss the very traditions that create the desired relationship. For example, several years ago Agape became a fad. Instead of Eucharist, groups were enacting an Agape Table. There isn’t anything wrong with Ecumenism or with Agape love, but they don’t replace Eucharist.
Reading a paraphrased Bible may give you a quick and modern interpretation of bottom lines, but we need to hear the entire Word of God. The Bible isn’t entertainment. It’s hard. It requires study and inspired reading and listening.
What do people give up for Lent? Things they perceive to be not good for them, usually. Too many calories, vanity, swear-words, pornography, alcohol. So, for 40 days, go without the vice, offer it up as sacrifice, while counting down the days till it’s okay to have it again. This is not Penance. Penance means understanding one’s shortcoming, it means one is truly sorry and wishes God to forgive, and it means one has the intention to sin no more, not do this again. Giving up something for forty days is not a modern day short cut to salvation, no matter how much you want that candy bar. There is much more involved.
Lent isn’t a short cut to healing and salvation, either. It’s an opportunity to walk the walk, however difficult. An opportunity to receive absolution and become a better person, more the person God intends us to be.
So while these new interpretations of centuries-old traditions are interesting or entertaining, they lack authenticity, that necessary reconnection, that closer relationship. They all tend to be more about US rather than God.
Let’s not try the short cuts in reading, discipline, devotions, or our walk with God the Son, no matter how difficult that is.