PAPA

Some heady days recently:
- amazing time with family at son Josh's wedding (we love you Jennifer),
- God drawing so very close at Innovare 2006, a conference I convened for youth, youth leaders in Canada and Bermuda - God is faithful.
- then three days at a conference with three heroes: Larry Crabb, Gordon MacDonald, and Dallas Willard - all of these men have impacted my life significantly, and there we all were in the same room drinking from the same spirit.

I am humbly learning God's ways, discovering his presence, and seeking his power/glory.

I've got 6 months blogs in my head right now, but I'll settle for Crabb's acronym on prayer - relational prayer:

P - present yourself as you are - don't fake it - as you are, God can take it - right now.
A - attend to your view of God, is it a twisted one in your image - or will "the real you meets the real God."
P - purge all relational sin - get things right- right now.
A - approach God to get what He longs to give.

Abba Father, Daddy, Papa hears, and knows, and longs to give us what he wants us to have and what we need. It's not always what we want, but he is smart, good, and dangersou. Bless him!

Fat Tuesday - Ash Wednesday

Even after 7 years in Quebec, becoming relatively adept in the french language, I never connected Mardi Gras (the party) with the literal translation - "fat Tuesday".

People get all juiced up, indulgent, before and on Tuesday knowing that lent/self-denail is approaching - hmmm....

In some churches on Ash Wednesday you go and receive a mark of the cross on your forehead from the ashes of the previous years Palm Sunday fronds that were burned. You bear the mark, you're reminded of Christ's journey.

Lent - we commence a time of remembering the passion of Jesus, the triumphal entry, but the events surrounding his death on the cross. It's sobering stuff, time for self-examination, discipline, meditation, renewal - sounds like something we should observe.

From now to Easter Sunday do something unique to remember the walk Jesus walked. It's not a hype thing, an alternate life-style, it's a focus - ie. I'll spend time with a friend, I'll go to this film festival - not a fat tuesday, ash wednesday trippy thing - it's a focus - let's do it.

Here's a hard-core prayer from the Ash Wednesday reading, Anglican Book of Common Prayer.

"Almighty and everlasting God, who hatest nothing thou hast made, and dost forgive the sins of them that are penitent: Create and make in us new and contrite hearts, that we worthily lamenting our sins, and acknowledging our wretchedness, may obtain of thee, the God of all mercy, perfect remission and forigivness; through Jesus Christ our Lord."