Transformed Mind

  Valentines Day & Ash Wednesday (Feb 14), an interesting combo of holydays this year. Valentines Day of course we think of love and romance, a time to express emotions, hand out little cards, boxes of chocolates, and for some reason a fat baby with wings and a bow and arrow. Love in scripture goes deeper than some of the superficiality we get on the commercialized day of Valentine, for it proclaims, “Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.” (John 15:13) Ash Wednesday is the beginning of Lent, a time of self denial, fasting, prayer, and the giving of oneself to contemplate God’s ultimate act of love that culminates on Good Friday. It’s a time to think of our own mortality. During the imposition of ashes whereby a person makes the sign of the cross on the recipients forehead you may hear the words, “All are from dust, and to dust all return.” It’s a sobering thought. And working in a hospital I really think about this quite a bit, deat...

We are now in the Lenten season, which commemorates Jesus’ 40-day fast in the wilderness before the start of his ministry. It is a time of reflection and repentance, leading us up to Christ’s death, burial, and resurrection. On dwelling upon this season, I thought, “What does this ritual fast really mean to me?” I see and hear of people giving up certain foods, TV; my wife gave up Facebook and deleted Candy Crush from her phone, but is this just a show, a check-the-box type exercise that Christians are just suppose to do? On Ash Wednesday a few weeks ago now, I received ashes on my forehead that visibly marked me as a Christian to everyone that saw me. But then I thought, “What about the rest of the year? How do people know I belong to Jesus?” This brings me to an important clarification, that of Cultural Christians and of Born-Again Christians. The former are those that are Christian in name only. They identify themselves as such because that was the religion they are born into and ra...