March 9/Saturday after Ash Wednesday Incline your ear, O Lord, and answer me, for I am poor and needy. Preserve my life, for I am devoted to you; save your servant who trusts in you. You are my God; Be gracious to me, O Lord, for to you do I cry all day long. Gladden the soul of your servant, for to you,…
Category: Songs for Lent
Song 3: Give It Up
March 8/Friday after Ash Wednesday For you have no delight in sacrifice; if I were to give a burnt offering, you would not be pleased. The sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise. ~ Ps 51.18-19 When I was growing up, the impending arrival of Lent brought on great…
Song 2: Decisions, Decisions
March 7/Thursday after Ash Wednesday Happy are those who do not follow the advice of the wicked, or take the path that sinners tread, or sit in the seat of scoffers; But their delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law they meditate day and night. ~ Ps 1.1-2 Decisions, Decisions Not a day goes by when…
Song 1: iSin, or I–Thou?
March 6/Ash Wednesday Have mercy on me, God, according to your steadfast love; according to your abundant mercy blot out my transgressions. ~ Ps 51.3 iSin, or I—Thou? If there is any doubt that today we cross the threshold from Ordinary Time to the season of penitence, the opening verse of Psalm 51 from the Ash Wednesday liturgy puts it to…
Lenten Reflections
Dear Friends, Again this year, I will be offering Lenten reflections by email. They will begin on Ash Wednesday, March 6, and end on Holy Saturday, April 20. Entitled “Songs for Lent,” each daily reflection will include a Bible verse, a brief meditation, a concluding prayer, and a link to the daily lectionary readings. There will be no reflection offered…
Song 40: A Gracious Plenty
March 31/Holy Saturday You make springs gush forth in the valleys; they flow between the hills, By the streams the birds of the air have their habitation; they sing among the branches. From your lofty abode you water the mountains; the earth is satisfied with the fruit of your work. LORD, how manifold are your works! In wisdom you have…
Song 39: Broken
March 30/Good Friday For all my foes I am an object of reproach, a laughingstock to my neighbors, and a dread to my friends; they who see me abroad flee from me. I am forgotten like the unremembered dead; I am like a dish that is broken. ~ Ps 31.12-13 The other morning as I was unloading the dishwasher, a…
Song 38: What to Give the God Who Has Everything
March 29/Holy Thursday How shall I make a return to the LORD for all the good he has done for me? ~ Ps 116.12 “What can I give him, poor as I am?” asks the poet Christina Rossetti in the Christmas hymn “In the Bleak Midwinter.” The psalmist, too, wonders, “How shall I make a return to the LORD for…
Song 37: Darkness Visible
March 28/Wednesday of Holy Week Insult has broken my heart, and I am weak, I looked for sympathy, but there was none; for consolers, not one could I find. I will praise the name of God in song, and I will glorify him with thanksgiving. ~ Ps 69.21, 31 And then there are the dark days, when our lives seem…
Song 36: Our Help in Ages Past, Our Hope for Years to Come
March 27/Tuesday of Holy Week For you are my hope, O LORD; my trust, O God, from my youth. On you I depend from birth; from my mother’s womb you are my strength. ~ Ps 71.5-6 It is the source of endless bemusement among parents that children born of the same mother and father and raised in the same household…