Fasting for Lent

How do you observe Lent?

In the Anglican church, it is common to hear someone ask, “What are you doing for Lent?” The answers are a mixture of giving something up and taking on something new. You often hear things like:

“I am giving up chocolate for Lent.”

or “I am cutting back on alcohol.”

or “I am going to read the Bible more.”

or “I am going to volunteer at the soup kitchen.”

The question often arises, why do we fast and take on disciplines for Lent? Is there something earth shattering about giving up chocolate? The answer is no. So why do it? Here are four simple but profound reasons.

Fasting for Obedience

1) The first reason is that Jesus asks us to do these things (see Matthew 6:1-18). It is about obedience. Of course, he doesn’t specifically ask for chocolate. That is not the point. Rather, it is part of a three-fold challenge from Jesus that gives focus to Lent. It is traditionally listed as prayer, fasting, and almsgiving.

These are meant to be serious practices, but not legalistic ones. Jesus wants us to pray because prayer is the language of our relationship with God. It is how we grow closer to God. Jesus wants us to fast because fasting allows us to find freedom from unhealthy habits. And Jesus wants us to give alms because it is an expression of care and compassion for people in need, and we need to practice doing that. Giving up chocolate or alcohol or whatever is an expression of fasting and doing without, not for its own sake, but for education and healing.

Learning through Fasting for Lent

2) Fasting is partly about learning. I don’t mean about facts, but about deep inner truths. It helps us realize that many people live in poverty and will never have what we are struggling to do without. We grow in humility as we see that we can do with less than we think we need, and that we have resources that can be used to help others.

In the book of Isaiah, fasting is closely connected with justice. The prophet criticizes those who fast and do other religious rituals, while simultaneously perpetuating injustice. He writes, “Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke? Is it not to share your bread with the hungry…?” (Isaiah 48: 6-7a). Part of the purpose of fasting is to help us develop a heart of compassion, which leads to generosity of spirit.

Fasting for Reflection and Growth

3) Fasting for Lent also teaches us something important about our inner life: we need heart healing. This is Jesus’ main goal. He calls us to fast because he wants us to grow deeper in maturity. The problem is that we have many unhealthy habits and attachments in our lives. For instance, let’s say I fast from all sugar during Lent. It doesn’t seem big. But the reality is that I would find that hard. I am used to quite a bit of sugar in my diet. Therefore, when I find it hard, I need to ask myself, why? What am I learning about myself? What am I learning about what I serve?

Now let’s imagine that it is so hard that I find myself getting irritated at my kids or wife. Again, I need to really think about this. What is it within me that is struggling? This should be easy: just stop eating sugar. But why don’t I have the patience and strength?

In truth, it is not easy. And this is the point. We don’t mature and grow unless we push beyond what is comfortable. If everything is comfortable, we stagnate. Giving up chocolate or alcohol–or whatever–amounts to putting controlled spiritual and emotional stress on our lives. This is partly so that we can push through it. But the real reason is that it gives us a glimpse into our souls and shows us we need healing.

Fasting for Lent for Healing

4) Healing is the point. God is nothing but love, and looks with compassion on our struggles. God wants to heal our souls, and this doesn’t happen quickly. The New Testament doesn’t distinguish heart, soul and mind in the same way we do. They are a whole, and inside are a mixture of positive and negative emotions, impulses and drives. There is compassion, hospitality, courage, love, and a host of other good stuff. There is also anger, fear, lust, unhealthy hungers, violence, prejudices, and a host of other bad stuff. They are all mixed up together.

Part of the Good News is that Christ came to bring healing and wholeness to human beings. He brings grace, mercy, and love to transform our hard hearts into soft hearts. This is neither a simple nor a quick process.

We tend to hide our hurt, pain, and negative emotions. But if we bring them into the gentle light of Christ with honesty and humility, he will heal them over time. Sometimes we need to do this soul work with another person guiding us, be it a spiritual mentor or a psychologist.

Fasting for Lent helps us to find the areas of hardness in our hearts by surfacing what needs the most healing. The next step is to pray for God to heal those places. Spend time in prayer for your inner being. God wants to birth within you a new creation. This is the deeper meaning of fasting.

Advent Traditions and the Incarnation

Advent Traditions & the Incarnation

At dinner time every evening, my children fight over who gets to light the Advent candle. This is one of our favourite Advent traditions. The desire to light the candle has little to do with piety and much more to do with the novelty of playing with fire. Nevertheless, I believe the simple act of delighting in striking the match over time anchors the deeper meaning of Advent. I hope that it at will sink in over years of lighting hundreds of candles. This is part of why I believe that physical traditions of Advent and Christmas are so important. Lighting a candle, putting up a tree, hanging lights, listening to Christmas music, giving to charity, baking goodies, wrapping presents, and more.

Traditions that Accent the Gospel Message

None of these are the Gospel message, but they accent it. They give us a concrete way to express the joy and wonder we experience as we meditate on the birth of Christ. God made us flesh and blood, not just souls. Jesus Christ did not just come as a proclamation. He came as a baby that his mother could hold and caress and physically love. The church has always recognized that we need to express our faith in physical ways. We break bread together in Eucharist, we adorn our church in beautiful colours and fabrics, we sing together, process with a cross, light candles, and exchange the peace. All of this helps us to embody the Gospel in our lives in simple and beautiful ways.

What are your favourite Advent and Christmas traditions? This year, consider renewing your appreciation of what they mean. For instance, when you light the Advent candles, meditate on the fact that fire represents the light of Christ. Or ponder the meaning of what hope or peace or joy or love might mean to you this day. When you put the star on the top of tree, let it remind you of the star that brought the wise men to Jesus. But even if you are not able to enter deeper into these truths this year, just enjoy the physical action of the traditions. They speak nevertheless.

Advent Arrivals

Getting Ready for Christmas: Advent Arrivals

As we travel deeper into the season of Advent, it is worth noting what the word means. Advent comes from a Latin word meaning “Approach or Arrival or Coming.” But this is not an ordinary arrival; it describes the ceremonial entry of an emperor, the king, or some other high official. When we use this particular word, Advent, we remind ourselves that this is the season of waiting and preparation for the King of Kings.

Three Different Advent Arrivals

In Advent, we are waiting for three different arrivals, and these give the season its unique texture. First, we look back to the Old Testament hope for the coming of the Messiah. This is why we read the book of Isaiah during Advent. Isaiah, more than any other Old Testament prophet, describes this hope to us. From centuries before the birth of Christ, Isaiah’s words remind us for whom we are waiting:

A child is born to us! A son is given to us!

And he will be our ruler.

He will be called, “Wonderful Counselor,”

“Mighty God,” “Eternal Father,” “Prince of Peace.”

Isaiah 9:6 (Good News Translation)

The second arrival is the second coming of Christ at the end of time. This is why we read the poetic gospel vision of Christ coming in glory. We have images of the sun being darkened and the stars falling. This reminds us that in the great renewal, there will also be great upheaval.

The third coming is entirely personal. Christ is not just an historic person. He is the son of God who loves you, and is continually being born again in your heart. This heart preparation is the main spiritual work of Advent, calling us to be ready to receive the note of great joy and wonder that comes with the birth of Christ.

Cultivating Advent

The paradox of the phrase ‘spiritual work’ is that it is not work at all in the normal sense. Rather, it is more the cultivation of a state of openness and trust in what God is doing. It is expectancy. To describe this expectancy, let me share with you a gift that was given to me by my friend Scott. He is the person in our Diocese (regional church) charged with Ecumenical and Interfaith conversations. He is always looking to build bridges with other groups and people. In this time of Covid, he mentioned that so much of his work slowed down. Those connections seem to be harder and harder to make. It can be discouraging. But he has found comfort in a song released back in 2017 called Your Labour is Not in Vain by The Porter’s Gate. The lyrics speak to this:

Your labor is not in vain

Though the ground underneath you is cursed and stained

Your planting and reaping are never the same

Your labor is not in vain

Your labor is not unknown

Though the rocks they cry out and the sea it may groan

The place of your toil may not seem like a home

But Your labor is not unknown

I am with you, I am with you

I am with you, I am with you

This song was a gift to me as well. Sometimes it seems like we are going nowhere, doing a lot of work for little growth. Do you ever feel that? And yet, Advent calls us to look bigger. The promise of the song and the season is that while there is struggle, it is not wasted. The seeds that we plant will bloom in the Kingdom of God. Learn to live in openness, trust and expectation. Advent gives us a profound message that Christ has already come, is going to come again, and is continually coming into your life day by day. Your labour is not in vain.

If you want to hear the song, you can find it here:

Keeping Awake: Discerning How God Speaks

Keeping Awake: Discerning How God Speaks

Welcome to the season of Advent, the time of preparation for the coming of the Christ child, the one who brings light and blessing. The message of Advent comes from the Gospel lesson we read last Sunday. Jesus says, “And what I say to you I say to all: Keep awake.” (Mark 13:37) What does it mean to keep awake? There are different ways to answer this, but at the simplest level, keeping awake means listening to God and getting to know how God speaks.

What Being Blessed Really Means

Once, when Jesus was teaching (Luke 11:27-28), someone was deeply touched by his wisdom. She exclaimed how blessed Jesus’ mother must be for giving birth to such a child. I am guessing that the speaker was also a mother who wanted to express her gratitude. Normally, Jesus might have agreed that his mother was pretty special, but here he answers differently to make a point. He says, “On the contrary, blessed are those who hear the Word of God and observe it.” One of our most important tasks is to listen to the Word of God.

God is speaking to you constantly. Are you listening? This is the question that Jesus wants us to take seriously. God does not usually speak to us like we speak to one another. Because God uses a different kind of speaking, we have to develop a different kind of listening.

How God Speaks

First and foremost, God has spoken through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. This is why we call Jesus the Word of God (John 1:1-3). To understand what Jesus’ life says, we turn to the second most important way God has spoken: through the writings that tell the story of Jesus, that reflect on the meaning of his life, and that tell the story of his ancestors. These are the Scriptures. We listen to the Word by reading, praying and reflecting on them. God also speaks through history, including the events of your life and the people you know.

This way of listening may be unfamiliar to us, and so the meaning is not immediately obvious. For this reason, listening becomes what we call discernment: a considered, prayerful process of tuning our spiritual ears to God’s voice.

The Call of Advent

Advent is the promise that Christ is coming. He comes at Christmas, but he also comes every day. His grace and love is constantly active. Do we see it? Do we hear it? Are we a part of it?

This Advent, consider how you listen to God and how you discern God’s voice. God is speaking to you. Are you listening? Do you keep awake?

Building a Prayer Life (How to Pray – Series Summary)

Building a Prayer Life

We have spent several weeks looking at the life of prayer. We have covered a lot of material, so in this final reflection I thought it might be helpful to highlight what I believe are the four most important points in the life of prayer.

1. Above all else, a prayer life is an intimate relationship with God.

From one perspective, a life of prayer can be complicated. As we have seen, there are many different approaches to prayer and all kinds of techniques for praying deeply. There are lots of different tools, books and apps that one can use. Before we get caught up with all of that, it is essential to remember that above all else, prayer is an intimate relationship with God. At its heart, prayer is utterly simple: God wants to be in relationship with you. And prayer is our side of that relationship. All of the techniques and tools are only supposed to help with that simple goal. If they help, by all means use them! But if they don’t, then don’t use them. It is that simple.

2. Lifting up your heart is the foundation of prayer

Prayer is based on a simple, essential movement. In the Eucharist, we call this ‘lifting up your heart.’ This is a way of putting aside the thoughts and activities of the world and giving your attention to God. The beauty of prayer as lifting up your heart is that you can do this anywhere: at home, at church, in the grocery store, at work… you get the idea. Every method and aid to prayer is only meant to facilitate and enhance this simple truth.

For me, prayer is a surge of the heart; it is a simple look turned toward heaven, it is a cry of recognition and of love, embracing both trial and joy.

St. Thérèse of Lisieux

3. Have a routine and a place for prayer

Consider having a special time and place where you pray every day. In the modern world, we sometimes forget the importance of ritual to structure our days and weeks. Without it, life can often seem chaotic and busy. Daily rituals of prayer help us to recenter and recapture what it is that we are all about. It is also helpful to have a prayer space, even if it is just a favourite chair. Over time, you come to look forward to praying in your space. Obviously, you do not need all of this to pray.

People often point to the Oswald Chambers quotation: “There is no need to get to a place to pray; pray wherever you are.” And I strongly agree with that. But Chambers was speaking to a different question. He was trying to encourage people that you don’t need to go to a church to pray with professional clergy. Prayer is available to anyone at any time. Of course, we can pray anywhere. But if we are going to create a habit, it is essential to have structures in place that will help us to do so.

4. Commit to a prayer life

This is the hardest part. I believe that if we wait until we have time to develop a prayer life, then we probably won’t do it. It is hard to find time to add something new to our lives. What we need to do is to understand how important prayer is, and we always find time for things that we believe are important.

It is not hard to see that prayer is important. I would suggest that this is the single most important activity that we do every day. Think about it… if we really believe that there is a God, and that this God wants to be in relationship with us, and that we were created specifically for this purpose, then spending time in prayer (daily communion with God) is the most important thing we can do. This is merely the law of relationships. For relationships to thrive, we need to put in the time. There is no other way.

Prayer is a special activity. It is clearly an ancient and universal impulse:

From primitive cave paintings to the whitewashed walls of the Royal Academy, the universal impulse to pray permeates and pulsates through human anthropology and archaeology, sociology and psychology. It is no exaggeration to say that to be human is to pray. The question, therefore, is not so much why we pray, but rather how and to whom. For billions of people today, the answer to such questions is to be found in the revolutionary life and teaching of Jesus Christ.

Pete Greig

I pray that your prayer life will grow and be a blessing to you. Though it will have its ups and downs, you will find the rhythm that works for you. Just remember:

Keep it simple,

Keep it real,

Keep it up.

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How to Pray: Confession and Sanctification

Confession & Sanctification

Our hearts are restless until they find their rest in you, O Lord.

St. Augustine of Hippo

As part of our worship every Sunday, we take a few moments to lay our sins before the cross, admit them to God, and receive forgiveness. Confession is a central aspect of Christian prayer. As the first letter of John tells us, “If we confess our sins, [God] is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.”

Why is confession important? There are sometimes misunderstandings about what we are confessing. We are of course confessing where we have fallen short and not been obedient to God’s commands. But we often fail to appreciate that God’s commandments are a form of shorthand for a much bigger project.

Working for a Bigger Project

A helpful analogy would be to see it like trying to get in shape. Once you make the decision to start, you need to decide how you are going to go about it. Usually, this is a combination of eating well and being physically active.

Let’s say you decide to walk on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, and ride your bicycle on Tuesday and Thursday. The activities are important because they are the daily activities that get you closer to your goal. But they are only a part of the bigger project: getting in shape. They are the means to get there.

If you fail to do one or two days, you can recover and still keep improving your health. But if you miss more and more, it becomes harder and harder to get in shape. When you stop altogether, it means you have given up the whole project. Saying that you are walking and biking is a shorthand description for your much bigger project: growing in health.

One Step at a Time

The commandments of God function sort of like the actions of walking and biking in this analogy. They are the day to day activities and moral decisions that we make. They are informed by the ten commandments, the promises of the baptismal covenant, and the great commandments of Jesus. We don’t follow them for their own sakes, but because they move us further along a bigger project.

The theological name for this bigger project is Sanctification. It means to be more like Jesus, or to be holy, or to be purified. Another way to think of it is becoming the person God created you to be. God wants your soul to be whole and well: centered, in rich relationship with others and God, loving, courageous, marked by love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, faithfulness, goodness, gentleness and self-control. This list from Galatians 5:22-23 describes the fruit of the process of sanctification.

Wrestling with Our Restless Hearts

Just as health is bigger than the individual bike rides that get us there, sin is more than just a list of things we have done wrong. It is better to describe it as self-sabotage. We are made to be in life-giving relationship with ourselves, each other, and God. Sin is the truth that we have a constant and often subtle tendency to ‘miss the mark.’ St. Augustine tells us that this is because ‘our hearts are restless.’ Away from God, our hearts are not often marked by the fruits of the Spirit. More often, our hearts are marked by loneliness, uncertainty, anxiety, stress, anger, feeling rushed, unappreciated, and on and on.

We try to cover the restlessness of our hearts through distraction and diversion. St. Augustine says we are ‘turned in on ourselves.’ This means that our desires are taken out of their God-given context for wholeness and relationship and are distorted to become focused on our own self-fulfillment, something which never fully happens. Out of this dynamic arises gluttony, lust, greed, sloth, wrath, envy, and pride. These are all attempts to still the ‘restlessness’ and arise from a spiritual battle for your heart. This means that confession is one of our greatest tools for healing and growth.

God Answers Confession with Mercy

I hope you can see now that confession is not just a legalistic exercise. It is the way in which we lay before God all the choices we have made that keep us from deeper life in Christ. The cross is the place where we find the mercy of God. Confession needs to be a regular part of our praying routine. Every time we repent and confess our sins, our souls are growing more and more into wholeness and true life.

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How to Pray: Silence and Contemplation

How to Pray: Silence & Contemplation

And prayer is more
Than an order of words,
the conscious occupation
Of the praying mind,
or the sound of the voice praying.

T.S. Eliot (1888-1965)

One of the great misunderstandings about prayer is that it is mostly about saying the right words. Often people will ask me to pray for them because they feel that they won’t get the words ‘right.’ I hope that I have made it clear that this isn’t the point of prayer. God just wants our heart.

Today, we are reflecting on the fact that some of the deepest forms of prayer have no words at all. Psalm 46:10 reflects that God tells us to “be still and know that I am God.” Prayer comes to a point where we just enjoy the presence of God and don’t feel the need to fill the space with words. This is contemplation and silence, one of the richest forms of prayer. It is similar to two friends who have spent so much time together that they don’t need to speak. They are just comfortable in each other’s presence. Likewise, sometimes God just calls us to rest in his presence. In this reflection, I want to talk about the process of coming into a contemplative space, and then end with a reflection on the gift of silence.

It is ironic that the deepest prayer is also the simplest prayer. But simpler doesn’t always mean easier. It is hard for us to enter a centered contemplative space because people are prone to distractions and may find it uncomfortable to sit in silence. For most of us, we have to ease our way into this form of prayer.

Entering Silence and Contemplation: Me and God

Think of it in three stages. The first is the ‘me and God’ stage. In this stage we find something to fix our thoughts on. This helps us with the issue of distraction. This could be a short piece of Scripture like we talked about in the Lectio Divina series. But it could also be a picture or an object. It could be an image or a concept. We use this ‘something’ to help us focus our attention. As we meditate on it, we explore this object of attention with our mind.

Whenever we get distracted, we come back to our object. During this time of meditation, we find our soul starts to quiet down and the distractions of life fade away.

God and Me

When this happens, we enter the ‘God and me’ stage. As our souls quiet down, the center of gravity changes. It is no longer about me coming to God, but God takes centre stage in my prayer. I find that I am no longer working so hard to stay focused. I am able to release the object that has helped me up to this point. Here I am just sitting in the presence of God.

But don’t think that nothing is happening. You are fully open to the grace and love of God at this point with no agenda. The effects do not emerge within the time of prayer. But you will find if you do practice this form of prayer regularly, you will be surprised that you are calmer, more observant and more patient. Silence and contemplation are part of the slow transformation process of being a disciple.

God Alone

On a rare occasion, there is a third stage. It is the ‘God alone’ stage. This is where you are so absorbed in God that God is everything in the prayer. But this is rare, and is always a gift from God. Be content with the experience of ‘God and me.’

Feeding Our Souls with Silence and Contemplation

Silence is food for the soul. There is so much noise and busyness in the world. This is good; there is a time and a place to be active. But we can’t forget that there is also a time and a place to be still.

Sometimes I will leave my phone and work on my desk and go for a walk. This isn’t just to get exercise. I also try to still my thoughts. It’s so easy to bring everything with me! I just open my ears and eyes to what is around me. Then I find that silence is not the absence of noise. It is the absence of being distracted and stressed; it is being present. This is good food for the soul.

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How to Pray: Why Didn’t God Answer My Prayer?

Why didn't God answer my prayer?

The hardest part about prayer is probably when prayer goes unanswered. Sometimes when God doesn’t answer my prayer, I can brush it off, like when I fail to get a good parking spot at the mall. But most often, it involves something deep and painful. For our family, it was the loss of Stephanie’s mother in 2010. She was a faithful Christian. She was active and otherwise healthy. We were shocked when she was diagnosed with stage four pancreatic cancer. It did not seem real at first. Honestly, it doesn’t seem real even a decade later.

She belonged to a strong church with lots of people committed to prayer. They came out in force. They prayed for her healing. We prayed for her healing. There was laying on of hands and special communion services weekly in her home. In the end, she died just nine months after her diagnosis. Her funeral service was the hardest one I have ever been to. She had been so welcoming of me in her family, and she and Stephanie were so close. We still miss her. Why didn’t God answer our prayers? I honestly don’t know, and I am still a little frustrated at God for this one. I also confess I take no comfort in Garth Brooks’ line that some of God’s greatest gifts are unanswered prayers. This was no gift. This was a great sadness.

So, what do we do with unanswered prayers? I want to offer a few thoughts that have helped me over the years.

1) We don’t know why God doesn’t always answer our prayer

To say that I don’t know why God didn’t answer my prayer is not a cop-out or surrender; it is an important and honest admission. The fact is, there is so much about the universe that we don’t even begin to comprehend. There are mysteries about God and life and death that are beyond our understanding.

What I mean by all of this is that we have no idea why or why not my mother-in-law wasn’t healed of cancer. There is a bigger picture and much more going on that I am completely unaware of. I am reluctant to try to find the ‘reason’ or ‘meaning’ to it. I don’t think there is the kind of ‘reason’ that will make it all better, even if I understood it. It is not about God needing another angel, or that it was her time, or that it was God’s greatest gift. We say it is a mystery for a reason. I think we need to leave it there.

2) Hold onto God’s love

The great difficulty with pain and grief is that it is easy to believe that it means that God is not loving. After the death of his wife, C. S. Lewis wrote that he wasn’t in danger of ceasing to believe in God, but he was in danger of losing his belief in the goodness of God.

This is why we need to turn to the cross of Christ. There, we see more than anywhere else the love of God meeting the pain and suffering of the world. God himself knew that pain. The cross is the unlikely fount of the healing of our world. In Jesus, we see that even if we don’t understand these mysteries of why and why not, we can trust that through it all God is nothing but love and mercy. In Jesus we see that God is not in the business of hurting people and standing back to see what happens. God is genuinely working for healing and wholeness, even when all the evidence in our lives seems to be pointing in the other direction.

We don’t know all the reasons why, but the cross shows us that the path of healing the world passes through suffering. Part of our faith is knowing that in the end, in eternity, God is going to make this right. He is going to overthrow sin and death. “And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.” God will make this right for Pat. By faith, we have to hold so tightly to the truth of God’s love. We cannot let this go. God is love.

3) Be honest

The biblical word for being really honest with God is Lament. We lament when we tell God how angry we are, how sad we are, and how frustrated we are. When God doesn’t seem to answer our prayer, we need to get it out; it can’t stay in our hearts. If you are surprised that we should come to God in this way, consider that almost two thirds of the Psalms are laments. Lament holds a central place in the story of the Bible. Like many of our ancestors in faith, we can be honest with God.

4) Give it to God

The theological name for this is the Prayer of Relinquishment. It is the prayer that Jesus prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane. He asked God to take away the suffering, then prayed, ‘but not my will, but yours be done.’ We don’t know what God’s will means here exactly, but the prayer gives it over to him. It says, I don’t know everything, but I know I trust you and that you are love. Please get me through this.

My mother-in-law taught me this more than anyone else. Before she died, she wrote a beautiful reflection, which was read at her church on Good Friday that year. I have included an excerpt below.

“Lord, not my will but thine be done.” Yes, I’m dying, but I’m not afraid any more. If anything in this time of weakness gives glory to God, then I’ve served the biggest purpose for which I was created. I’m looking forward to the end of pain and sorrow and to seeing the face of the One who gave me life. The beautiful images of the New Jerusalem in the book of Revelation become brighter and more vivid as time goes on:

Then one of the elders addressed me, saying, “Who are these, robed in white, and where have they come from?” I said to him, “Sir, you are the one that knows.” Then he said to me, “These are they who have come out of the great ordeal; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.

For this reason they are before the throne of God, and worship him day and night within his temple, and the one who is seated on the throne will shelter them.

They will hunger no more, and thirst no more; the sun will not strike them, nor any scorching heat; for the Lamb at the center of the throne will be their shepherd, and he will guide them to springs of the water of life, and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.” (Revelation 17:13-17)

– P. Crane

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