" Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, was led by the Spirit into the desert, for forty days." [Luke 4: 1-2].
The Lenten season begins on Ash Wednesday, and continues for forty days. During this time, we are called to fast, to meditate and to pray.
Modern life seems so ill-suited for us to retreat into quiet time. Everywhere we go, we are bombarded with pre-recorded music in stores, with advertisements even in taxicabs, with the "ping" of our smart phones announcing text messages and e-mails. We have become on-call 24 hours a day.
Can we ever really get away?
I remember several years ago now, being on vacation is a different country and being thrilled that the 1-800 number that was provided to retrieve voice mail messages from my office, simply did not work! Had I finally made it to the mountaintop, and really entered the desert of quietude?
Finding time -- no! making time -- to retreat can be as simple as turning off all those devices!
That is not always practical, however, given that we may have bosses or family members, who need to reach us.
But I have another solution: we can decide to use our tablets or smart phones or laptops for the constant consumption of materialistic messages.
OR, we can -- especially during Lent-- deliberately view sacred images from our personal media devices.
How would all of your meetings go, if you could silently view a sacred image on your tablet just before the meeting began?
How would your trip to work go, if you could, when stuck on a bus, or stopped in traffic, glance at a holy image on your smart phone?
I have now placed in this space, an image of a gorgeous stained glass window. It is part of a series of windows representing Stations of The Cross. This image will remain on my blog page throught Easter 2013.
I will never delete this posting, so you can access this image from this page, anytime you want to!
Image link: http://stainedglassinc.com/images/religious/800x800/2273.jpg
[Stained glass image courtesy of www.stainedglassinc.com.]
Lord, I pray that You may give us daily moments in which to fill our souls with the spiritual Strength that comes only from you.
(c) Spiritual Devotional 2013. All Rights Reserved.
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