What is the best way to prepare our hearts to celebrate our Lord’s resurrection on Easter morning?  Today’s readings provide an effective road map as we engage the Holy Season of Lent.

In the message from the twenty-sixth chapter of Deuteronomy, we find Moses near the end of his life’s journey.  At that time, he felt the need to remind his Israelis brethren of the continual presence of the hand of God throughout their history.  They needed to pause and reflect upon how God had carried them through adversity and triumph.  Perhaps that is an ideal starting point for each of us this season.  God has certainly been there with each of us every step of our journey, something that we so easily forget in the rush of life and something that definitely deserves our attention.

Psalm 91 strongly reinforces the unmistakable fact of God’s presence, specifically in the challenging moments of our lives.  God is indeed our fortress, the only one we can ALWAYS trust.  He has sent His angels to impact us in all our ways.  Quietly spending time reflecting on God’s presence, His love, His redeeming grace is a crucial part of our Lenten experience.

In the second reading from the tenth chapter of Romans, we find perhaps the heart of a Lenten focus: “The Word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart.”  That thought is further emphasized in the fourth chapter of Matthew – today’s Reading of the Verse Before the Gospel -  where we read “One does not live on bread alone, but on every Word that comes forth from the mouth of God.”  Lent is truly a time for us to focus upon God’s Word – the written Word we find in our precious Bible as well as His spoken Word to our hearts as we spend time quietly contemplating our loving God and what He has in mind for each of our lives.

Jesus himself provided a specific example of how we might effectively focus our mind & heart during our 40 days of Lent. In the fourth chapter of Luke, we find the description of Jesus’ journey into His 40 days in the wilderness.  He was tempted there by the devil, an environment much like ours today where it seems as if the devil is constantly seeking to overpower us.  Jesus used this time to fast – perhaps to convey the message to us that “It is written, One does not live on bread alone” – but as we earlier read in Matthew, on “every word that comes forth from the mouth of God.”  Spending a large amount of time meditating on God’s Word during Lent would definitely seem to be a worthy use of our time.  The devil’s second temptation of Jesus resulted in Jesus' reminding us that, “You shall worship the Lord, your God, and Him alone shall you serve.”  Once again, this serves as a powerful message for us to make sure we are worshipping God and God alone.  It is so very important to spend time thinking about the things in our lives that we think are important – the things that we may be allowing to rise to the point of worship.  The final piece of the devil’s  challenge of Jesus involved asking God to prove His power & influence.  Once again, Jesus simply reminds us not to “put the Lord, your God, to the test.”  This could be viewed as a warning to us.  As we go above and beyond our normal routine of focusing our lives on Jesus during Lent, we may begin to think God owes us something for all this effort.  Of course, we must continually guard against allowing such pride to seep into our hearts.  Lent is a time for us to focus upon our amazing God who loves us unconditionally, so much more than we could ever comprehend or truly appreciate.  We need to carefully consider how indeed we are choosing to respond to that love and to ponder how we are actually living out every moment of our life.

Dear Heavenly Father, as we seek to draw closer to you throughout this season of Lent, open our hearts to you.  Allow us to begin to grasp the enormity of your redeeming love. Help us to honestly evaluate how we are actually choosing to respond to our Lord and Savior’s calling.