Comments on: Longing for Lent and Liturgy

By: Maeta Emmons

Maeta Emmons — Sat, 19 Mar 2011 00:10:00 +0000

So glad for Sarah’s posting regarding St. George’s Anglican visit – I really enjoyed studying and the discussions we all had.

By: Albert

Albert — Wed, 16 Mar 2011 17:22:01 +0000

This is very good; I think many tend to underestimate the power a rich liturgy draws from the God who made our bodies to be responsive to beauty and form.

Matt Milliner describes the liturgy of Coptic Christians this way in the wake of bombings:

There was security at the entrances to the churches of Cairo, as I suppose there needs to be. But even if, God forbid, some deluded individuals were to attack these Christians (as some have lately in Nigeria), total despair would be misplaced. The energy in this liturgy cannot be so easily extinguished. Indeed, any other kind of explosion would be dim in comparison to the clamor of this praise. Terrorists summon fear from their claim that the power they wield is ultimate, which it is not. The deathless one so boisterously exalted in the Coptic liturgy – He is the one with power over life and death.

Would that all Christian worship so form believers to glory in Jesus even in the face of violence, rather than merely entertain us with interesting and fun talks.

By: Pastor Philip Spomer

Pastor Philip Spomer — Wed, 16 Mar 2011 15:05:45 +0000

On Ash Wednesday, I began by addressing the issue of repetition in prayer. We want to avoid what Jesus called “vein repetitions”, yet not all repetition is vein, such as “and His mercy endures forever”.
This is how I went about it. If we think of prayer as a mere exchange of information, then repetition is unnecessary, after all, God is not hard of hearing. However, if we think of prayer as an exercise, or like the act of cleaning a dirty plate, then repletion makes perfect sense. As a plate isn’t cleansed in one wipe of the dish cloth, and as a muscle isn’t bulging in one pump of the dumbbell, so our souls require, at times, an intense repletion to fully impress our pray, not on God, but upon ourselves.