Welcome to the first of our daily reflections for Lent, focussing on the many injustices which exist in our world, as we seek the Justice of God which Christ proclaimed, and for which he died and rose again. More resources are available at www.southcardiffministryarea.co.uk/just-lent
Ash Wednesday
‘Now, now—it is the Lord who speaks—come back to me with all your heart, fasting, weeping, mourning.’
(see Joel 2:12-18)
What makes you angry? What makes you sad? Whilst anger is often thought of as a negative emotion, it can also stir us into action—if we are angry for the right reasons—so that we can bring change, and fight injustice and inequality.
Jesus himself was stirred with anger in the Temple when he overturned the tables of the money-changers and drove them out of the Temple. Perhaps, in that moment, he may have had in mind the time he was driven out of the synagogue in Nazareth as his angry listeners led him to the cliff top with the intention of throwing him off, so incensed were they about the prophecy he said was being fulfilled in himself. Love is led to the cliff top.
During each of these forty days of Lent we’ll be exploring issues of social-justice. There is, we know, much injustice in the world, and many of these instances of injustice will make us angry and sad. We all have a part to play in creating a world where every human being is treated with dignity. Each of us, in some way, has failed to live up to God’s designs for us and the world. Today, on Ash Wednesday, we engage in a corporate act of sadness and mourning for the ways in which we have spoiled God’s world and strayed away from his designs. In turning back to God, we turn back to Love himself who experienced that cliff top moment of anger and death. We turn to him who, in Christ, has turned to us.
PRAY FOR a just and holy Lent filled with care and compassion for the poor and vulnerable, conscious of our own wrongdoing but delighting in the dignity of every human being and all that God has created.
South Cardiff Ministry Area 