This is the first in a series of articles entitled “Getting Over Yourself for Lent.” We’ll have a new article every week of this Lenten Season.
We can’t remove our crosses or the reality of our deaths. Only Jesus can.
People everywhere, every day, feel God’s wrath—and not as merely an afterlife threat but as a present reality.

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The season of Lent gives almost unparalleled opportunity for preachers to placard before their auditors the Cross of Christ and beckon Christians to take up their cross and follow Him.
The paradoxical Puritan doctrines of an inability to convert oneself and the command to work out one’s salvation with fear and trembling placed would-be converts like Mather in quite a bind.
Our prayer confesses that God’s abode is beyond us, yet ever so near for the prayer presupposes that we are being heard, even in our sighs and whispers.
Trusting in Christ’s promise of new life and deliverance breaks through sorrow and worry; such trust pours joy into the way we think and the way we experience life.
Bonhoeffer was in the unenviable position of trying to break a spell. The spell was the Nazi crisis, where the totalitarian state threatened the church, and yet to many, seemed to be saving the culture and nation from mortal dangers.
Regardless of my experience, my talents, or even my mood, it’s these gifts of Christ that I have to give away. They are all I have, and they are everything.
So, what do we pray? What do we say? In times of fear, in times of chaos, in unprecedented times, we pray and say the words that have been written on our hearts.
Your forgiveness means you are in God’s favor, and no matter what tomorrow brings, God’s face is shining upon you, and he is gracious to you. Whether you live or you die, you belong to the Lord.
And because Jesus on the cross was sin in its entirety, God cannot look at him. He turns his face away, causing Jesus to cry out in utmost agony, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?”
As a parent listens for the cry of a hurting child, our heavenly Father waits for our cry of weal and woe.
Out of great pain and suffering often comes goodness, beauty, and truth. John Donne, born on the 22nd of January in 1573, is an excellent example of that for us in his masterful work, Death Be Not Proud.
When God cancels you, it is an occasion for all of the canceled who are in heaven and earth to rejoice in that one more is added to our number.