• Living Abundantly,  Personal Spirituality

    How to Begin Again: Lessons from Nature (and Lent)

    The doldrums of Lent are upon us.  Several weeks of slogging through, haphazardly trying to fulfill commitments of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving, sometimes doing them well and sometimes not doing them at all. But everything worth doing is worth doing, even poorly, right?  Even in the midst of Winter’s Last Stand, (read: winter’s last shot at causing nasty viruses that knock whole families on their feet, keep small babies up at night with congested noses and keep preschoolers down all day, bound to the sofa with a fever) we must try to slog through, even if it’s poorly. Because as most people know it’s hard to keep commitments and fast…

  • Personal Spirituality,  Scripture

    The Temptations of Jesus

    Before we dive into the temptations of Jesus, please take a minute to read the 1st reading and Gospel from the 1st Sunday of Lent. I am forever amazed by the scriptures. The way the New Testament fulfills the Old Testament, the ways that the Old Testament is a shadow of all that is to come in the new. Our Lenten observance is no different.  It is steeped in scripture, and has its roots in the garden with the fall of man. The temptations of Jesus don’t come out of nowhere, we see where they come from when we look closely at the account of the fall. Now, I’m skipping…