We encourage you to sign up for the 40-40-40 Lenten Challenge, a challenge with our partner Southeastern Iowa Synod to participate in Lenten practices, including these daily devotions. Just signing up counts as participation! More info here.

One Sunday a parishioner came to me and said, “I don’t think our worship is very welcoming. We say, ‘Good morning!’ and then proceed to talk about how awful we are with the confession and forgiveness. What must visitors think when we force them to talk about how bad we all are?”

As someone who hasn’t been Lutheran my whole life, I was taken aback because corporate confession and forgiveness is one of the components of Lutheran worship that I loved the most – a way of us recognizing that we are imperfect, that our combined failures, brokenness, and sin have led to a world in which not all are loved, safe, or experience the wholeness of life that God intends. What better way to enter into worship than to confess – to simply tell the truth? It is, in fact, when we face this truth that God’s Spirit has room to move in and transform our hearts, our thinking, and our practices.

Imagine if, instead of getting defensive about our frailties, or angry about the things that we don’t like about our church, we simply confess – together and openly – that all is not right and ask for God’s forgiveness. Freedom comes from telling the truth, and when we are set free we are able to live into the mission God has for us.

So the next time you practice confession and forgiveness in worship, use the silence and the space to invite God’s Spirit to change your hearts and your community so that God’s love can be set free in all that you say and do together.

Prayer

God, you call me from the ashes of death to live in the life of Christ.
Open my heart to listen to the voice of your Spirit. Give me courage to hear and boldness to act in those places you are revealing need to be changed. Broaden my imagination for what it means to be a disciple in your world, that I may more fully experience your love and grace. Amen.

Journal Prompt

Lent calls us to repentance, to turn from that which does not give life. This week I invite you to write or make a list of all that is getting in the way of you experiencing the fullness of life in Christ. What are those things in the congregation that no longer give life? Over the course of the week consider what God might be saying to you as you examine those things which hinder your experience of God’s life? What might God be calling you to let go, or leave behind, in order to create space for life?

Week One Devotions by Rev. Erika Uthe, uthe@seiasynod.org