{"id":7647,"date":"2021-02-09T07:48:56","date_gmt":"2021-02-09T12:48:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/notstrictlyspiritual.com\/?p=7647"},"modified":"2021-02-09T07:48:56","modified_gmt":"2021-02-09T12:48:56","slug":"lent-are-you-willing-to-be-surprised-by-god","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/notstrictlyspiritual.com\/life-lines\/lent-are-you-willing-to-be-surprised-by-god\/","title":{"rendered":"Lent: Are you willing to be surprised by God?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Flannery O\u2019Connor, the American Catholic southern gothic writer,\nonce said, \u201cI write because I don\u2019t know what I think until I read what I say.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>That line has always resonated with me, but never more so than\nwhen I sit down to write reflections on Scripture readings, verses that can\nfeel so familiar there seems nothing new to uncover. My latest book of\nreflections, <em>Not by Bread Alone 2021: Daily Reflections for Lent<\/em> (Liturgical\nPress), is my third book of Lenten meditations and prayers, and so the\nchallenge is real \u2014 but realer still is the truth that lives within Scripture.\nOld passages can speak new hope to us at any particular moment of our lives if\nwe are willing to open ourselves up to the work and words of the Spirit. Even the\nfamiliarity of Lent itself can turn a season of growth into a rote spiritual\nexercise if we are not prepared to be surprised by God, sometimes in\nuncomfortable ways. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<!--more-->\n\n\n\n<p>Here\u2019s how I explained that challenge in the introduction to\nmy book, which is meant to serve as a guide through the Lenten desert: <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s easy to think, as we begin yet another Lenten journey,\nthat we know the drill. We\u2019ve been here before; we know what\u2019s coming. But the\ntruth is that Scripture is a living thing, always new. I know this firsthand\nbecause every time I sit down to write a Lenten reflection about a Scripture\npassage I\u2019ve heard or read too many times to count, something jumps out at me\nand makes me say, \u2018How did I not notice that before?\u2019 We hear every Scripture\nreading differently depending on where we are on our life journey, our\nspiritual journey, or maybe just what side of the bed we woke up on that day.\nGod meets us where we are, and, if we\u2019re paying attention, we can hear God, see\nGod, recognize God in unlikely places, in stories we think we know. When we\ntake time to listen for the still small voice, a scene, a sentence, a word\ncalls out to us as if surrounded by blinking neon lights along a dark highway, and\nwe are found, even if only for a few minutes\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201c\u2026To be honest, there were many days when I sat down with a\nset of Scripture readings and could not imagine what I might have to say that\ncould be helpful to you. But, after sitting with the Scriptures, reading and\nrereading, taking them for a walk, sharing a cup of coffee with them as the sun\nrose outside my window, something always found its way off the page and into my\nheart, like a delicate shoot pushing through the cold, hard&nbsp;earth\nof winter into the warmth and light of spring.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I\u2019m always fascinated by where the spirit leads: an Old Testament\nreading sparks a reflection on hiking or on the Fibonacci sequence; a Gospel\nreading prompts the memory of a failed attempt to grow strawberries; another leads\nto an observation on the martial art of Aikido and still another on the\nchildhood game of \u201cTruth or Dare.\u201d None of those topics was in the forefront of\nmy mind as I sat down with Scripture, and yet through a series of spiritual\ntwists and turns those seemingly ordinary and odd things became fodder for the\nSpirit to open my heart a little bit wider.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We all have that kind of creative prayer possibility within our\nreach. If we quiet ourselves and sit with Scripture, turning a word or a phrase\nor a scene over and over in our mind, the Spirit will reveal something to us \u2014 and\nabout us \u2014&nbsp;as a way to lead us deeper into the heart of God.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Not by Bread Alone 2021: Daily Reflections for Lent is\navailable from Liturgical Press in multiple formats: English, Spanish,\nlarge-print, and e-book. For more information, visit <\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/notstrictlyspiritual.com\"><em>www.NotStrictlySpiritual.com<\/em><\/a><em>\nor order from <\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/litpress.org\/Products\/6424\/Not-By-Bread-Alone\"><em>https:\/\/litpress.org\/Products\/6424\/Not-By-Bread-Alone<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Flannery O\u2019Connor, the American Catholic southern gothic writer, once said, \u201cI write because I don\u2019t know what I think until I read what I say.\u201d That line has always resonated [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":6974,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[121],"tags":[162,40,686,101,687,96],"class_list":["post-7647","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-life-lines","tag-grace","tag-lent","tag-lenten-journey","tag-life-lines","tag-not-by-bread-alone","tag-spiritual-journey"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v25.6 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Lent: Are you willing to be surprised by God? 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