A Lenten Message from Bishop Miller
Dear Friends in Christ,
As we begin to walk the way of Lent this year, I found myself drawn to the words of the first two verses of Hymn #142.
Lord, who throughout these forty days for us didst fast and pray,
Teach us with thee to mourn our sins and close by thee to stay
As thou with Satan didst contend and didst the victory win
O Give us strength in thee to fight in thee to concur sin.
I hear in these words an echo of our Presiding Bishop’s Invitation for Lent 2020: A Call to Prayer, Fasting and Repentance leading to action. I encourage you to read his letter and consider its invitation.
I also hear in this hymn a reminder that Lent is not first and foremost about guilt but rather sanctification. Repentance is re-direction, re-minding, and re-training under the guidance of the Spirit. The purpose of Lenten observance is not seasonal holiness but participation in God’s process of making us more and more into the people we are destined to be. We pray for grace to fight and conquer sin in our lives so that we may know the truth the Apostle Paul sets forth in the Letter to the Romans that “in all things we are more than conquerors through Christ Jesus our Lord.”
The lessons we learn in Lent are meant to carry through to the Easter Life. The lessons learned in the Lenten desert are to empower us for service to God, just as our Lord’s forty days in the desert prepared him for his public ministry.
My prayer is that this holy season will be for us all a season of renewed faith and devotion.
Yours in Christ,
Bishop Steven A. Miller