Bible scholar and pastor N.T. Wright retells the following story about an archbishop who was hearing confessions of sin from three hardened teenagers in the church. All three boys were trying to make a joke out of it so they met with the archbishop and confessed to a long list of ridiculous and grievous sins that they had not committed. It was all a joke. The archbishop, seeing through their bad practical joke, played along with the first two who ran out of the church laughing. But then he listened carefully to the third prankster, and before he got away told the young man, “Okay, you have confessed these sins. Now I want you to do something to show your repentance. I want you to walk up to the far end of the church and I want you to look at the picture of Jesus hanging on the cross, and I want you to look at his face and say, ‘You did all that for me and I don’t care that much.’ And I want you to do that three times.”
And so the boy went up to the front, looked at the picture of Jesus and said, “You did all that for me and I don’t care that much.” And then he said it again, but then he couldn’t say it the third time because he broke down in tears. And the archbishop telling the story said, the reason I know that story is that I was that young man.
There is something about the cross. When we take time to reflect, meditate, and pray concerning what Christ did for us on the cross, something deeply happens to us. Like the holy season of Advent, Lent is such a time to reflect on what God has done for us through His Son, Jesus Christ. We need these seasons in our lives.
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I’ve written a prayer for Ash Wednesday that names some of the struggles that I usually feel around Lent, but I hope it might be helpful to others who wish to journey through this season in faith, hope and love in the face of temptations to be faithless, hopeless and loveless. pic.twitter.com/n76uSJc8Hx
— W. David O. Taylor (@wdavidotaylor) February 23, 2023