March 21, 2018 - Wednesday Evening Service Lent 5 - Prayer Around the Cross

Same Wednesday worships for Lent with only music changes each week yet vastly different experiences for me.

Pastor Ray's apparently led the same readings and the prayers (I assume because I missed Lent 3 - Prayer Around the Cross due to work demands).

For Lent 2 - Prayer Around the Cross all my thoughts centered around the power of prayer and I was troubled because of reactions to the Parkland shooting on Ash Wednesday / Valentine's Day. Not only contemplating the thoughts and prayers response given to victims and their families but the anger from many who do pray yet criticized others by saying thoughts and prayers is not enough or prayer alone is not an appropriate response. The outer silence and contemplation did not match the inner turmoil I was experiencing.

Lent 4 - Prayer Around the Cross left me disconnected. An old feeling crept over me of the church attempting to trowel over a crack or gap that is being genuinely experienced. It is so easy to say that what you experience that is beyond the church-given platitudes are what you need to own and correct. There is, at the same time, an assumption that acquiescing to authority, especially the church, is what a Christian is required to do.

At least this was the way I heard the C.S. Lewis quote that was part of the service. It is up to the individual to choose a vulnerable heart - otherwise that heart becomes irredeemable. Thank our loving, faithful God who, when faced with a human who makes this choice, is forced ti make the call that this is another instance where the heart is ultimately irredeemable because it does not want to be broken. Too bad.

Tonight's service, Lent 5 - Prayer Around the Cross, left me with a peculiar emptiness which was another reminder of experiences in my past or, to be more precise, events that had no meaning for me. My younger self viewed that, whenever this occurred, the worshiping community I was with was being "hypocritical" and just going through the motions. My older self is more forgiving than that and also understands that the hypocritical judgment is inescapably about us, not only them. It always has been and always will be.