Big Lent Walk
Wednesday 22 February - Saturday 8 April 2023
Sign up for the Big Lent Walk and you'll help communities thrive in even the most difficult environments.
Dristy has learned from her mother, Rupali, how to grow food in harmony with the environment.
“I set before you life or death, blessing or curse. Choose life, then, that you and your descendants may live, by loving the Lord, your God, obeying his voice, and holding fast to him.”
How many choices have you made so far today? What to wear? What to eat? How to travel? Our days are filled with the decisions we make. Many are inconsequential, quickly made and forgotten. Occasionally, however, we are called to make more transformative choices – decisions that can change the course of our lives.
Rupali, a rural smallholder from southern Bangladesh, made such a choice when she decided to take a training course on sustainable agriculture and the environment. With the skills, tools and knowledge this provided, she has transformed her land, her neighbours’ land and their village’s chances of survival in the face of extreme weather challenges brought by the climate crisis.
Rupali is passing on all that she has learned. She has taught her teenage daughter, Dristy, how to grow food and how to care for the land, to adapt and be more resilient for the climate challenges that lie ahead.
The readings today focus our attention on the importance of choosing wisely. In Deuteronomy, Moses offers a clear choice to the Israelites: life and prosperity, or death and disaster. We too must choose whether to accept God’s offer of fullness of life and so share in his abundant generosity or to continue with excessive consumerism and the destruction of creation.
Today’s gospel helps us to understand what it means to embrace God’s love and compassion. It is to renounce selfish desires that exclude others, take up our cross and follow Jesus. To live a life patterned after Jesus’ generous self-giving love, speaking out against injustice and living in solidarity with those suffering. We can trust that, in doing so, we will find abundant life.
As we embark on this season of Lent, how can we choose to walk in Jesus’ way?
Lent prayer
Loving God,
grant us wisdom as we make decisions
and help us to always choose your life-giving way.
Amen.
Act
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