Lent Day 27 | 40 to Life

The below reflection was provided by the Diocese of Southern Virginia:

Friday in the Fourth Week of Lent

O God, you have given us the Good News of your abounding love in your Son Jesus Christ: So fill our hearts with thankfulness that we may rejoice to proclaim the good tidings we have received; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

These words are certainly uplifting and encourage us to evangelize about the love of God and his Son Jesus Christ. I must confess, however, that I have often had trouble feeling this perfect abounding love. And I suspect others also have difficulty. How do we experience this abounding love?

In “Birth of the Living God” the author, Ana-Maria Rizzuto, postulates that our belief in God is affected by early childhood experiences – more often by interactions with parents and other authority figures. Thinking back, what were your early experiences of loving relationships that formed your own perception of a God-figure? Do you perceive God as being loving, patient, kind, and forgiving? Or angry, fearful, or scary? Warm and embracing, or cold and distant? Perhaps somewhere in between. It is likely that our ability to feel God’s abounding love in our lives stems from our ability to feel abounding love at all.

And still, we are called to spread the good news, to proclaim the love of God even if we can’t fully feel it ourselves. If we understand that those receiving our message – God’s message – may be as wounded as we are, we must model that abounding love of God to others and in doing so we start to heal our own brokenness and make room for God’s love to come in.

The Diocesan Lenten Reflections come from clergy and laity in each of our nine convocations. The reflections are based on the collect appointed for each day in Lent. Today's collect and the associated daily readings can be found HERE.