Monthly Archives: February 2024

Lenten Book Study – Talking with God: First Sunday in Lent

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Where do we find God in our daily lives? I guess the first part of answering that question leans on one important assumption: we are looking for God. The complex and hidden mysteries of life can be searched out with many different lenses, depending on one’s belief structure. In our discussion here, we will presume that the lens that leads to greater understanding and wholeness of life is illuminated by finding and conversing with God. And, to be even more specific, (because the divine nature of “God” is a complex thing as well), we proceed with a particularly Western Christian understanding of God. I preface all that follows with this statement because our book study group reflected on what people throughout the world might think of the subjects we will soon encounter, and we agreed that the conversation would take different paths, depending on where the conversation was held. This follows an important point made by Mark McIntosh in his first chapter of Mysteries of Faith: context provides clues to conversation and helps us to discover greater meaning.

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Lenten Book Study – 2024: Mysteries of Faith

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Once again, welcome to the holy season of Lent! As I skim through my web journal, it seems that Lent has become the time I return to this space. Maybe one of my Lenten practices this year will be to try and cultivate a more sustained practice of writing here…at least, one can hope! This year our book study is focused on one of the books in the New Church’s Teaching Series. The book we will study is Volume Eight of the Series: Mysteries of Faith, by Mark McIntosh.

This book centers itself in a discovery of the mysteries of life…the mysteries of life that are centered in the ongoing creative being of the divine presence of God. There are many, many things we can easily see in life, and there are as many (if not more) things that are invisible; things we can only imagine, or maybe theorize from clues we discover. The focus of McIntosh’s book is on the mysteries of the invisible work of God in our lives…which becomes a bit less mysterious if we dedicate ourselves to deepening our relationship with the divine source of creation. The focus of McIntosh’s book is the practice of “theology,” which for some folks might seem like a scary word. However, I appreciate that McIntosh quickly spends some time describing the “practice of theology” and, in doing so, quickly disarms the potentially overwhelming aspects of the word and brings the practice to something we all do in our daily lives. McIntosh writes in the opening Acknowledgments: “If prayer is ‘something understood,’ theology is the struggle to put what has been understood in prayer into words…Theology, I believe, is a sharing in the mystery of God’s life; it is what happens as God the Holy Spirit works within us the mystery of the Father’s Word made flesh. And it is, I believe, a deeply Anglican intuition to draw our theology from our life of common prayer throughout the ages.”

We will explore the Mysteries of Faith, chapter by chapter, as we make our way through Lent. The book also provides a few study questions for group discussion, and I will share parts of those questions throughout our journey through this Lenten book study. I hope you can join me.

Blessings on your Lenten journey, where ever it may take you. Peace be with you.