Category: Daily Reflections for Lent

The Jews took up stones again to stone him. Jesus replied, “I have shown you many good works from the Father. For which of these are you going to stone me?” —John 10:31-32
Jesus just can’t win.

The Jews said to him, “Now we know that you have a demon. Abraham died, and so did the prophets; yet you say, ‘Whoever keeps my word will never taste death.” —John 8:52
This week, the Gospel readings come from a long passage in John during which Jesus is talking circles around the Jewish authorities who are looking for reasons to kill him.

How are your Lenten practices going? Are there any commitments that have been particularly meaningful for you this season? Can you see the good that God is doing in you and through you because of them?
Maybe your intention this Lent wasn’t to do anything more but to do less so that you could be more attentive to God’s invitations as they’ve come.

The people became impatient on the way. They spoke against God and against Moses, “Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? For there is no food and no water, and we detest this miserable food.” —Numbers 21:4-5
“We feel better with the certainty of misery than the misery of uncertainty,” says psychologist Virginia Satir.

You anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows. —Psalm 23:5b
When I read the responsorial psalm for today, the above line stood out because I have so much for which to be grateful. My family is in good health.

When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, “Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.” —John 8:7
One of the arguments against capital punishment is the rhetorical question,

O Lord my God, in you I take refuge; save me from all my pursuers, and deliver me, or like a lion they will tear me apart. —Psalm 7:1-2

Substantial research today suggests that the chronic state of stress and busyness in our modern culture is worse for our health than the stress our ancestors experienced when predators chassed them.

The Lord is near to the brokenhearted. —Psalm 34:18

In the book What Happened to You? by Oprah Winfrey and Dr. Bruce Perry, Perry tells a story of a young boy he worked with once who had been physically and sexually abused for years,

“They have been quick to turn aside from the way that I commanded them; they have cast for themselves an image of a calf, and have worshiped it and sacrificed to it, and said, ‘These are your gods, O Israel,

Sing for joy, O heavens, and exult, O earth; break forth, O mountains, into singing! —Isaiah 49:13

Although the Lenten season is often imaged as dry, barren, and desert-like, that doesn’t mean we can’t rejoice and sing in the midst of it.

The man went away and told the Jews that it was Jesus who had made him well. Therefore the Jews started persecuting Jesus. —John 5:15-16

The man had been lying ill for 38 years, but when Jesus asked him,

The official said to him, “Sir, come down before my little boy dies.” Jesus said to him, “Go; your son will live.” The man believed the word that Jesus spoke to him and started on his way. —John 4:49-50

When my daughters were little,