Let Our Light Shine
A Lenten blog by Rev. Marisa
By the time you read this, we will just have stepped down onto the path of Lent, the 40 days leading up to Holy Week when the Christian church world-wide turns inward for more introspection, contemplation and creating space for God. It is a time where our news is full of much darkness and challenge, and many are feeling deeply sobered about the future of humankind. One of the great gifts of our Lenten passage is that it seems to reflect many cycles of human life throughout the centuries . . . we have often been at thresholds of despair throughout history and wondered what the following of Jesus Christ might have to say to us in times where hope in human nobility seems so elusive?
Early Christians clearly knew this would ever be a struggle for followers trying to be faithful . . . how to believe in the Good News when the teachings seem so at odds with the world, and our good acts seem trampled in violence and suffering? In three gospels is the story of the Transfiguration, when some of the disciples glimpsed Jesus in his true form, human and divine, way up in the mists of a mountain top.…