Lenten Meditations: Wednesday 3 March
| Wed Mar 3 |
am 72 pm: 119:73-96 |
Jere 3:6-18 | Rom 1:28-2:11 | John 5:1-18 |
SECOND WEDNESDAY OF LENT – John & Charles Wesley, Priests, Evangelist and Missionaries 1788, 1791
LITURGICAL THEME FOR THE DAY: John Wesley was educated at Charterhouse School and Christ Church, Oxford, and after ordination to the priesthood in 1728 became for a time his father’s curate. Later John accompanied his brother Charles to America and published his first hymnbook in Charlestown in 1737. Returning to London John became a travelling preacher and a leader in the Methodist movement which eventually separated from the Church of England and established its own chapel. Charles Wesley was educated at Westminster School and Christ Church, Oxford. He was ordained in 1735 and travelled to Georgia as secretary to the governor, James Oglethorpe, but stayed there only a few months. Returning to England he became, like his brother John, a travelling evangelist and missionary. A prolific poet, Charles Wesley wrote more than 6000 hymns and is widely regarded as the greatest of all English hymn writers.
MEDITATION OF THE DAY: The Book of the Prophet Jeremiah is worthy of daily reading especially in Lent. In this third Chapter we hear again despite Jeremiah’s initial reluctance, profoundly gracious invitations and encouragements given to the Hebrew people to return and repent.
In the 3rd Chapter and the sections appointed for today we are reminded that these invitations for a change of heart come on the heels of great disobedience and we meet a God that engages a people where sin abounded, but grace abounds more. When one reads this chapter, one cannot help but think how unfaithful they had been and how they deserved to be abandoned, and yet God was willing to receive them into his grace upon their repentance (Jer 3:1-5). The impenitence of Judah, and their persisting in sin, are aggravated from the judgments of God upon Israel, which they should have taken warning by (Jer 3:6-11). Such lessons are not just about a lost people of a bygone age, they speak to our own times and people, where in the West more and more people turn away from the God and the faith that they have known to explore and embrace their own ways and wants which only appear to be life giving but in fact are less than that.
PRAYER OF THE DAY: God of grace, rouse up within your people fear of the Lord, and call us to remember this holy season knowing that you will come in the clouds in great power and majesty to judge the living and the dead. May we respond to God’s claim on us with due fear and love so that as often as God disturbs the sky, yet spares us still, we should implore God’s mercy, examining the innermost recesses of our hearts and purging our sins all for the love of you. Amen
ANCIENT WISDOM/PRESENT GRACE: “All that a Christian does, even in eating and sleeping, is prayer, when it is done in simplicity, according to the order of God, without either adding to or diminishing from it by his own choice.” – John Wesley, from A Plain Account of Christian Perfection.
Lenten Discipline – Go to http://www.cyberhymnal.org/bio/w/e/s/wesley_c.htm and listen to the variety of hymns from Charles Wesley and make that the music for your day. Perhaps such inspired work from morning to night may change your perspective. If you cannot go online, go to the Index of your favorite hymnal and see how many works of his are there and use them for meditation.
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