With 820 communities set to take part in the biggest ever Lent Event beginning on 22nd of February, the Lent Event head office is a buzz with volunteers packing kits to be sent off across Australia this week. Boxes are being packed with thousand of brochures, money boxes, posters and forms for processing Lent Event donations. Communities have already received spiritual resources for the 40 day journey including the essential companion, ‘This One Life’, the small group discussion guide and daily prayer book. Other resources distributed include partner-centred worship and children’s resources. With Lent just 6 weeks away, preparations are getting under way in local communities all over Australia to ensure Lent is a time of renewal and growth for church communities both here and overseas.

This week Lent Event rolls out its faith resources to more than 780 participating congregations right across Australia. Lent Event welcomes Western Australian communities, joining the growing movement of Australian faith communities seeking to come alongside our international partners burdened by material disadvantage.

Lent Event’s ‘This One Life’ is the essential discipleship companion for 2012 combing a six-part discussion series and daily devotional guide. The small group discussion series asks ‘How can we live authentic lives that honour God with the transformational love Jesus showed?’ This important question for people of faith will explore options for walking more closely in the way of Jesus Christ.

Through these 40 days of prayer, study, worship and action, participants will experience stepping deeper into the flow of God’s grace by dwelling in the way of Jesus Christ and opening up to the transformation of the Holy Spirit. By the end of the forty days, people can look forward to a new or deepened relationship with God and with God’s people living in poverty.

Lent Event is about communities participating in a common action of deepening relationships with God and our neighbours culminating in sharing material resources with our brothers and sisters in developing countries. Beyond Lent, groups are invited to grow in their connection with and support of some of our neighbours who do not have access to basic resources such as clean water through the new series of Act, Reflect, Connect community events .

Collecting Water in PNG

One such event enabling communities to connect further with partner communities is the Water Walk. The idea is for the group to set out to a specified destination approximately 2-3kms away to collect as much water as possible – enough to meet all their needs for the day (for drinking, washing, cooking etc.)

Recently, a group of 22 people from West Epping Uniting Church undertook a WaterWalk in their local community. As the DVD clip capturing the walk shows, the event was meaningful for all those involved with walkers acknowledging that they grew in their awareness of the plight of people without access to clean water and in their conviction to work in partnership with such communities. Read  Erica’s WaterWalk Blog and check out the clip the to learn more.

Resources for faith communities have been prepared to ensure the event has spiritual and practical impact both here and in our partner communities. Please visit the Water Walk page to access resources or call us for help in organising a walk locally -02 8267 4267.

‘Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.
Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs
is the kingdom of heaven.’

We flatter ourselves when we imagine ourselves as natural
peacemakers,
for although we have no love for war and we yearn for peace,
we have lost much of the commitment and will required to make
peace in our world, peace in our nation, peace in our communities,
peace in our homes.

Yet your voice rings down through the ages and leaps off the page into
our hearts still today,
‘Blessed are the peacemakers’, and if we are honest, Lord Jesus,
we would acknowledge that we are well short of blessed.

We need not live as children of war, children of resentment, children of
anxiety, children of empire,
for you are showing us still an even better way,
the way of giving and not taking,
the way of peace that is the more excellent way of children of God.

When we walk as children of God, as the light of the world,
the Scriptures, history and memory tell us that there are many
people invested in keeping the world in darkness, in turmoil,
in enmity.

To risk your way, Lord Jesus, is to risk the kind of trouble you so often
found yourself in.

We will watch closely as you resist evil, that we might learn how to resist
evil in our world today.

We will listen closely as you live a life of love, that we might follow in
your footsteps.

We will prepare ourselves for the forces that move against, preparing to
witness to you,
Jesus Christ, as agents of reconciling love in a hostile world.

Should suffering result from our standing for God’s vision of a world
made new,
then prepare us to mean it when we say ‘so be it’.

Amen.

Let me consider, in the place of consumption,
how I might distribute of what I have,
to those who are in material need.

Let me commit, in suspending my daily routine,
to act in faith and hope of the sake of others,
to seek justice and do what is right.

Let me participate, in forgoing my comforts,
in the movement to eradicate extreme poverty from the face
of the earth,
by working for the truly common good.

Let me understand, in denying myself,
that my fasting is a setting aside of my own interests,
that I may not miss the point of your design for human community.

May light break forth like the dawn,
and healing spring up quickly.

Amen.

‘Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.’

May you purify my heart this day.
I don’t want any mixed motives any more.
I want to be released from trying to make the world believe I have
it all together.
I want to pursue faithfulness – inside and out.

May you cleanse me from my sin this day,
from my determination to do things my way ,
from the ways I prioritise my needs first and foremost,
from my acts of rebellion and my thoughtless words.

May you remove from me all iniquity this day,
all delusions of self-importance,
all remnant stains of my brokenness.

I long to see you. Open the eyes of my heart this day.

Amen.

We confess our sin –
the many ways our minds have been set on ourselves,
our own security over that of others,
rather than your law of costly and servant love.

When we avoid examining ourselves
but leap to scrutinise our neighbours: correct us.

When we display great energy in pursuit of worldly wealth,
but invest neither discipline nor enthusiasm in the treasures of the
Spirit: liberate us.

When we seek after your crown,
but refuse to shoulder your cross: rebuke us.

When we confess you amongst your friends
but deny you when your enemies close in: challenge us.

When we build our comforts and pleasures on the sacrifices of others,
instead of forgoing our privileges for the sake of a world that all
can share: transform us.

Be merciful towards us, O Lord, for we have sinned,
and are in need of your healing and mercy.

We no longer desire a life that is hostile to your way,
but one that embraces the life and peace that is your gift to us.

Raise us from the way of death,
to walk in your way of resurrected life.

Amen.

Forgive us our obsession, God our Provider,
with worship in our preferred style,
in language with our preferred nuance,
at times and places that least inconvenience us,
and miss the opportunity to see with fresh eyes.

Forgive us our arrogance, God our Peace,
that keeps out people who differ from us,
that holds what we have for ourselves,
that wants to claim ownership,
and misses the chance to experience gospel-community.

Heal of us every kind of blindness.

Amen.

‘Almighty God,
You know that we have no power in ourselves to help ourselves:
Keep me both outwardly in my body and inwardly in my soul,
that I may be defended from all adversaries which may
happen to the body,
and from all evil thoughts which may assault and hurt the soul.
Through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and
the Holy Spirit,
one God, for ever and ever. Amen.’
from the Anglican Book of Common Prayer

God, in whose image I am created, hear my confession.

Through my experience of fasting,
I am becoming more conscious of my sin;
my tendency towards separation from you and my neighbour.

Through my experience of fasting,
I am becoming more conscious of my weakness;
my need for your empowering grace that lifts me and makes
me whole.

Through my experience of fasting,
I am encountering the desire to cut back in my life;
that I might find a true centre – a place of the heart.

Through my experience of fasting,
I am discovering a yearning to grow in love and holiness;
through repentance and into transformation.

God, in whose image I am created, to you be all thanks
and praise.

Amen.

‘Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,
for they will be filled.’

We are joined together as your body, Lord Jesus,
in pursuit of the kind of world you proclaimed was at hand.

We, your church, hunger and thirst for a world in which there is enough
for everyone,
and too much for no-one.

We yearn for the expanding presence of your justice
that rescues and releases the oppressed.

We long for the restoration of the powerless and the outcasts
to their rightful place in the covenant community.

We feel it in our bodies, that the world is not all as it should be,
and that, in you, the one we call Christ, we and all the world
are saved from unrighteousness.

Fill us with the saving knowledge of your grace,
that sets us free to live as a new creation,
and calls us to reach out with love and compassion to all.

Amen.