This article was also shared in the newsletter, but as we approach Ash Wednesday, I wanted to share 40 creative ideas for Lent, helping to take this opportunity to deepen our commitment to and relationship with God (and special thanks to Rachel Held Evans, whose blog is responsible for many of these ideas):

10 Questions to Ask Yourself

1. When I wake up on Resurrection Sunday morning, how will I be different? 
2. From what do I need to repent? 
3. Is there one particular sin in my life that repeatedly gets in the way of loving God with my whole heart or loving my neighbor as myself? How do I address that sin over the next 40 days?
4. Is there anyone in my life from whom I need to ask forgiveness or pursue reconciliation? 
5. What distractions most commonly interfere with my time in prayer/Scripture?
6. What spiritual discipline do I need to improve upon or want to try? 
7. What are some things in my life that I tell myself I need but I don’t? 
8. Why am I giving this particular thing up? How does giving it up draw me closer to God and prepare me for Easter? 
9. What am I going to tell myself when self-denial gets hard? 
10. Is it necessary/helpful for me to share the nature my fast with others or should I keep it private?

10 Book Recommendations  

1. 40 Days of Living the Jesus Creed by Scot McKnight 
2. Celebration of Discipline by Richard Foster
3. The Cost of Discipleship by Dietrich Bonhoeffer
4. The Hole in Our Gospel by Richard Stearns 
5. Following Jesus by NT Wright 
6. Wondrous Encounters: Scriptures for Lent by Richard Rohr
7. Renovation of the Heart: Putting on the Character of Christ by Dallas Willard
8. A Place at the Table: 40 Days of Solidarity with the Poor by Chris Seay 
9. Show Me The Way: Daily Lenten Readings by Henri Nouwen
10. Bread and Wine: Readings for Lent and Easter  - Orbis Books


10 Creative Ways to Give Up AND Give Back 

1. Choose to make water your only beverage for the 40 Days of Lent. Donate the money you save to an organization that provides healthy drinking water abroad. Examples include sponsoring water filtration systems for our Rwanda partnership or checking out bloodwater.org.
2. Eat porridge or rice and beans for a day (or for 40 days!) and donate the money you save to an organization that combats world hunger. (Ex: World Vision, Church World Service) 
3. Give up eating out for 40 days and donate the money you save to an organization that combats world hunger.
4. Do a 40-day purge of all your excess stuff and donate the best of it to Goodwill or a local thrift store that benefits the needy in your community. 
5. If you are giving up social networking (like Facebook and Twitter), commit the next 40 days to getting to know your neighbors better and meeting any needs you perceive. 
6. Ladies – Give up your favorite beauty products for a month and make a loan to an organization such as kiva.org, which provides "microloans" for as little as $25 to help those trapped in international poverty begin a business.
7. If you are really brave, try living on $2 a day for 40 days, the way millions of families around the world live every day.
8. Give up your favorite little luxury purchases (chocolate, iTunes, magazines, books, shoes, specialty coffee, electronic gadgets, etc.) and send the money you save to an organization that provides help to the victims of the Haitian earthquake.
9. Write a list of 40 names for the 40 days of Lent. Every day of Lent, pray for and write a letter to one of those people.
10. Pray the news. Upon seeing or reading about tragic situations, pray for those affected and pray for our enemies.

10 Mediations--Spend time each day with these words; meditate upon them, take them as your own. (Don't have room to print these litanies or prayers, but they are easily found online!)

1. Psalm 51
2. Psalm 139
3. Isaiah 58
4. The Beatitudes (Matthew 5:3-12)
5. The Lord’s Prayer (Matthew 6:9-13) 
6. Litany of Penitence 
7. Litany of Humility 
8. Prayer of St. Francis 
9. Penitential Prayer of St. Augustine 
10. Consider reading the Sermon on the Mount (alternating between Matthew’s account and Luke’s account) every day for the next 40 days.

Ephesians
What is the point of everything? In this letter, Paul talks about "a plan for the fullness of time" and "the mystery of God's will." Pretty important stuff to know!

And at the heart of God's purposes is unity, the gathering of all things. So, if this is the end to which God will bring all of creation, then Paul wants us to live in anticipation of that unity! Chapters 2 and 3 focus heavily on the reconciliation of Jews and Gentiles and its importance, and Chapters 4-6 then articulates what this unity looks like in the Church, society, and even the household. If God will one day gather all things together as one, and our unity is a sign and foretaste of that unity, how will that affect how we relate to others and orient our life? The Epistle to the Ephesians holds a radical word of unity in an individualistic age!

Deuteronomy
Deuteronomy serves as the bridge between the books of the law and what is known as the "Deuteronomic History" (Joshua through 2 Kings) It is a summation of God's covenant and laws given to the nation while in the wilderness, while also setting the stage to explain the pattern of Israel's history in the promised land (breaking the law, falling into trouble, being rescued, re-committing). It is this looking back on the law and the wilderness experience and the looking forward to Israel's national life in the land promised that makes this a significant book.

We do have to press on to our next readings in the Bible challenge!

Leviticus
This is where many well-intentioned efforts to read the Bible have crashed upon the rocks. Even in what seems tedious to us, there is a glimpse of God's purposes and nature.

An oft-repeated statement of God in Leviticus is "Be holy, as I am holy." God is very different from this world, and God is setting aside a people who will also be very different, who will be a reflection of God's holiness and righteousness. In the meanwhile, don't forget those original covenants to Abraham and Israel--this is not just an exclusive and quirky club, but their holiness in some way will bring blessing to the nations.

So, as you read, what does this book tell us about God's relationship with the people? What does it tell us about God's hope for how people relate to one another?

1 Corinthians
In Romans, Paul lays out the big picture of the Gospel: what it means for us and the world. We have died to our old selves and have risen to new life, anticipating God's deliverance of the whole creation. Our conduct is not driven by law, but by dying to sin, the new life, the guidance of the Spirit, and the hope of one day "being conformed to the image of the Son [Jesus Christ]" (Rom. 8:29).

So, what does that look like?

In 1 Corinthians, the framework for how we relate to the world, how the community of faith conducts itself, hits the road as Paul addresses the problems of this difficult community in Corinth. Paul writes that he knew nothing among them except Jesus Christ and him crucified (2:2). This does not mean that all Paul ever talked about was the crucifixion; it means that this is the fundamental framework for how their attitudes and actions should be shaped, according to a God who is willing to abdicate all privilege for the sake of loving others, as seen in Jesus Christ. As people who will ultimately reflect the God we worship, what does it mean to live "cross-shaped lives"? How do we abandon our honor, privilege, comfort, and advantages for the sake of others? As we read Paul's instructions, do so knowing that his understanding of Jesus' crucifixion is behind everything he says. Make the connections, see how the cross informs his statements on conflict, worship, money, lawsuits, sexuality, relating to society, etc 

The problem addressed by Pauls epistle to the Romans is not just our individual failings, but the overall corruption of the whole creation under the reign of sin and death. What becomes of the creation as God's righteousness and mercy prevail?

Paul writes that the whole creation right now "waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God...in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God" (8:19, 21). The creation yearns in hope that it too will be redeemed and delivered from its bondage. And why is it also yearning for the children of God to be revealed? Because its redemption will come through that very people adopted as children of God. Adam had the mission of caring for and cultivating the world. Abraham was called into covenant that the nations would be blessed. God blesses and calls people into covenant not for their sake alone but for the sake of the world. Creation yearns for these children of God to be revealed because it is through a humanity renewed to its original dignity and authority, reflecting the image and glory of God, that will put the world right again.

In the meanwhile, the "whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now" (8:22). But not just the whole creation, "but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies." While the creation is going through its travails, where is the Church? Sitting on the sideline, smugly holding onto all the answers? Impatiently waiting for God to zap us out of here and discard this sorry world? Or is the Church right there with creation, groaning alongside it (and even with God the Holy Spirit groaning in solidarity with us all!), going through the birth pains of a world that is not what it should be, but which we believe will be set right again (sounds an awful lot like God the Son groaning in solidarity with the world's pain upon the cross). We have the first fruits of a life that has been put to death to sin and raised to new life; this is the hope of the whole creation.  This is resurrection, not escape. This is hope, not contempt. These are radically different outlooks (both of which are present within the modern church) that have significant ramifications for the Church's mission, identity, and how it relates to the larger world.  A Church that views its mission as helping people to escape a rotten world will look very different from a Church pressing forward to join in God's work of renewing and delivering a creation that was made good and will be good again. God's election is not just for our individual salvation, but part-and-parcel of God's deliverance of creation.

And we do all of this difficult and painful work with patience (8:27), not losing heart or faith in God, not growing weary and contemptuous of the world, but we press forward in hope, knowing that nothing will separate us from God's love, nothing will hinder God's righteousness from having the final word over the Lord's creation (8:31-39). We have the hope not only of forgiveness, but of new life, and not only of new life, but a new creation.

These are admittedly long posts, but this is the climax of Paul connecting the work of God with our lives and the world. This is the framework through which Christians must view themselves and the world, it is the bedrock of their hope, so some extra attention will be indulged for Romans 8.

Paul's letter to the Romans has been addressing what has gone wrong and how God is fixing it. He reaches the big summation: "For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do: by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and to deal with sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, so that the just requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit" (8:3-4). The law is righteous, but is undermined by human sinfulness. Humans are certainly incapable of obtaining righteousness. God is merciful, but cannot abandon his righteousness (after all, the abandonment of righteousness is what caused this problem in the first place). So God, out of mercy and so righteousness may prevail, sends his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh. The just requirement of the law is fulfilled in us because a human, Jesus Christ, who is also God's very presence in the flesh, has lived in perfect obedience and put his body to death so that it may rise to new life. Sin and death have been defeated and humans may be free from the tyranny of sin; righteousness has mercifully prevailed.

And now, as people who take faith in the one who is our victory, we live in the Spirit, "since the Spirit of God dwells in you" (8:9). What Jesus has done is in essence conveyed into our lives by the work of the Holy Spirit. His death and his resurrection are made real by the Spirit, which connects us to Jesus. We may die to sin and rise to new life because of the Spirit given by Jesus Christ.
 
Furthermore, "If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit that dwells in you" (8:11). This is important. First, that Spirit is with us right now. We do have a future hope, but must not lose sight of the fact that this new life, this resurrection life, is with us now. Within us is the same Spirit that raised Jesus Christ from the dead, living in us, operating in us, empowering us NOW! Furthermore, read Paul closely: "will give life to your mortal bodies also." What happened to Jesus? He was raised from the grave bodily. What will happen to us? We will be raised from the grave bodily. In short, the resurrection. How does this differ from how we view our post-mortem destinations? Do we think about resurrection or do we envision a disembodied, spiritual existence elsewhere? The main problem the Gospel addresses is a world that was made good and has gone bad, including ourselves. God, through Jesus Christ, is making it right again, not abandoning it and giving us an escape pod, not separating us from some lesser part of ourselves. The whole human being is made in the image of God and "God will give life to your mortal bodies also."

And all who have this faith, who are led by that same Spirit that gives life to the dead, we may now be called children of God. Not only do we have a good master as seen in Ch. 6, but we are actually a part of the household! That same spirit is a "spirit of adoption" (8:15), "bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God" (8:16). In fact, we are heirs, joint-heirs with Jesus Christ himself. And Paul concludes this part with a note on suffering, which we do "so that we may also be glorified with him" (8:17). This is not just senseless suffering, but a willingness to suffer and give up on things for the sake of obedience to God, for the sake of God's will being done on earth as it is in heaven. In doing this, we are not proving something to God, but participating with the Son of God, our Lord Jesus Christ, who himself showed God's true glory by his willingness to die for the sake of others. May we share in that true glory for the sake of the world.

Ah, yes, the world. What of it? Paul is not done writing. God is not done. The creation is broken and sinful, but we worship a God who did not let have death have the last word over the Son, and will not let sin and death have the last word with creation. God's righteousness will prevail, as Paul will explain in the rest of Romans 8.

Jesus Christ has died and has been raised from the dead. This happened 2000 years ago, so what does it mean for us now? How does this connect directly to our lives?

In short, we too have died. In baptism, we have been buried with Jesus "so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life" (6:4). The pattern of the Christian life is to die to our old selves and to rise to new life in Christ.

This is not only the good news of God's grace, but it is also the framework for why Christian behavior matters and what it looks like. Some might say, "Hey, there's no law; must be moral anarchy!" Others might say, "Oh, God will forgive us anyway" (similar to the attitude Paul is objecting to in 6:1). Paul is saying that our lives are no longer shaped by a law, but by the newness of life that comes from dying to our old selves. Death and resurrection are the pattern of Christian living, not rule following; and this is far from moral chaos, but this is people being renewed in the likeness of Christ, the fully obedient one, by the power of the Holy Spirit (more on that in Ch. 8) by being joined to his death and resurrection. We are obedient not under the threat of law, but in the joy of being adopted children of God (yet again, more on that in Ch. 8!).

And ultimately, this is freedom. Paul urges us not to "let sin exercise dominion in your mortal bodies, to make you obey their passions" (6:12). Paul likens people's relationship with sin to be like that between a slave and a master. After all, how many people do we know say they just couldn't give up so-and-so behavior that is destructive to themselves and others, yet claim to be free. Paul exposes the dark tyranny of sin, which ultimately leads to death, and illuminates the dominion of righteousness, which leads to life. Everyone has a master: one exploits, corrupts, and kills; the other sanctifies us to share in and reflect God's own glory.

A quick reminder of two big issues in the background of Romans. First, we have the large problem of all creation discussed in chapter 1. Secondly, Paul talks often about God's righteousness/justice; merely turning a blind eye to sin would be an abdication of God's righteousness. So, what is God going to do so that his righteousness/justice may come to bear upon this terrible situation?

This brings us to another large theme: justification. This is not just forgiveness, but is a judicial term meaning to find someone in the right. How can humanity, of whom Paul describes as having sinned and fallen short of the glory of God (3:23) be justified? They're clearly guilty! In the first half of chapter 5, Paul begins to explain how this comes through Jesus Christ's death and resurrection. It is not just that we are forgiven, but we are also justified, declared to be innocent, in the right, through Jesus, the faithful son of God. Being "justified by faith" (5:1) is then to trust in this verdict, to trust in the reality of what Christ has done. Furthermore, not only are we forgiven, not only are we justified, but "through [Jesus] we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand; and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God" (5:2). At the beginning, having turned away from God, turning our worship to things of creation, we "exchanged the glory of the immortal God" for lesser images, further degrading ourselves, tarnishing the image of God imprinted upon humans (Gen. 1:27). Now, through Christ, we have hope in yet again sharing in the glory of God. What had once been ruined is being renewed again; life as God intended it is real and our hope "does not disappoint us" (5:5). And all of this bears witness to God's love: "God proves his love for us in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us" and "For if while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son, much more surely, having been reconciled, will we be saved by his life" (5:8, 10). We are saved by Christ's death and resurrection. What salvation looks like, and what death and resurrection look like for us and for the whole creation will become clear in Chapters 6 and 8.

So, we are justified by Christ's obedient sacrifice: his death and resurrection. Good for Jesus; what does that mean for us, though? We start to get an answer in the second half of Chapter 5.

It seems like a strange idea to a culture of individual responsibility, but we stand as guilty from the legacy of the first man. For Paul, sin is not just the aggregation of individual sins, but also a condition. Furthermore, sin is also a power that allows death to exercise dominion (a word used 5 times in just these 10 verses) over the creation. Humanity not only abdicated the glory of God's image by turning from God, but also abdicated the dominion which God had entrusted to humans (Genesis 1:28-30). All are guilty in the original sin and cannot help themselves; they can only be justified if another representative human can live obediently to God on their behalf. This is Jesus Christ (5:15-19). Now grace has the final word, grace exercises dominion, "leading to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord" (5:21). In short, there has been a changing of the guard on our behalf; God and life now have dominion where sin and death once held sway. But eternal life? What is that? Is that merely living forever in a disembodied spiritual state? What does it look like

A quick close-reading note on 3:22--A part of this often reads "faith in Jesus Christ." I'm not sure why so many Bibles insist on this, when the straight reading of the original Greek is "the faith/faithfulness of Christ."  This might initially seem nit-picky (especially as Paul will talk about the importance of our faith), but as Paul goes on to talk about sin coming through Adam's faithlessness, it is important to note that any hope we have is in Jesus' faithfulness FIRST, standing as a representative for all humanity (but we'll get there in Chapter 5).
 
The Gospel is first and foremost about what God has done for us in Jesus Christ, not what we have done; even our faith is nothing to brag in compared to being "justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a sacrifice of atonement by his blood, effective through faith" (3:24-25). Grace is the receiving of something that one has not earned or deserves. All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God; not much of a position to toot our own horn, even in our faith, which is only possible because of Jesus Christ's faithful obedience to the righteousness of God, both in a life of obedience and in a death to fulfill God's purposes. And through his death, "[God] did this to show his righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over the sins previous committed" (3:26). Go back to the original problem of disobedience and sin. Mere forgiveness does not solve the problem, but under God's righteousness, all are found guilty and fall under condemnation. The death of Jesus Christ somehow satisfies both righteousness and mercy. How? Stay tuned!

So we have seen what is wrong with the world (and perhaps got a reminder of the first few chapters of Genesis). God is just and righteous; surely God will do something!

Chapters 2-3 make it clear that God is not indifferent to the corruption and suffering of the world. It is also made clear that God will not play favorites. There is a special group, the children of Abraham, who are in covenant with God, as we recall in Genesis. The point, though, is not that they may be a special exception "for God shows no partiality" (Rom. 2:11), but so that "in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed" (Genesis 12:3). Somehow, God's work of making things right shall be done through a particular family/nation.

And as God takes this nation under care, God also blesses them with a law (as we shall see in Exodus!) to guide them as the people of God. When they fail to take its guidance to heart and into practice, they are accountable to the law. The law is good, holy, and a guide to righteous living, but simply being the people who have the law is not going to create a special privilege. Those who do not have the law but instinctively do what the law ordains are found to be in the right (2:14-16). Those who boast in being those who possess the law, but fail to actually live up to it bring God's name into disrepute (2:23-24). Both the law and circumcision are signs of a covenant that calls Israel into righteous living; they are not grounds for honoring that particular nation above others, especially when they are part of the same mess as the rest of the nations. The advantage of the Jews is that they have a great privilege--they were "entrusted with the oracles of God" (3:2)--but have not been good stewards of what was meant, all along, to be a blessing to the whole world.

And Paul introduces a big question on which God's dilemma hinges: "Will their faithlessness nullify the faithfulness of God?" ( 3:3b). God is righteous. And God is faithful. God has made a covenant with Israel so that his righteousness may come to bear upon the world. What happens when the covenant people do not live up to this, when even the people of God can be justified before God? Will God break the covenant with Israel or will God compromise righteousness? What if the answer is NEITHER? Through verse 20, Paul affirms both God's righteousness/justice and God's truthfulness/faithfulness.

In the introduction to Romans, Paul declares "the gospel of God." As said before "gospel" is a royal/imperial proclamation of good news, and the proclamation is this: "[God's] son, who was descended from David according to the flesh and was declared to be Son of God with power according to the spirit of holiness by resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord" (1:4). Jesus Christ has been vindicated as lord of the world by merit of his resurrection and everything Paul talks about hangs upon this good news. So, why is this significant?

We must first start with a big theme in Romans, which is God's righteousness. Another word for this could be God's justice. And the big problem is, how will God be true to righteousness/justice in light of what is wrong in the world? Romans, in large part, is about how God remains just and righteous towards a world of great corruption, and yet this is good news of grace.

And what is wrong with the world? In short, there is a broken relationship between God and humanity. And what does that look like? "For though they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their senseless minds were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools; and they exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling a mortal human beings or birds or four-footed animals or reptiles" (1:21-23). Worshiping birds, animals, or reptiles seems rather out-dated and silly to us, but dig back to our study and Genesis and the idea of an image. Men and women were made in the image of God, and they were meant to reflect God's gracious and righteous rule (in other words, God's glory) in the world. By failing to acknowledge and be grateful to God, they gave their attention and adoration to lesser things, and their reflection of God's glory and their wisdom became distorted. "God gave them up" (v. 24, 26, 28) to the consequences of this choice, and in verses 24-32 we see the consequences of how all relationships are distorted because the primary relationship between God and humans is distorted.

Will God simply let this run its course? Will God let human degradation ultimately