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Lent Devotions
February 26
Rob Hileman is a former summer staff member and currently serves on the camp’s board of trustees. He is an elementary music teacher and youth minister at Bellevue Reformed Church in Schenectady, New York.
Romans 4:16-25
I’m not crazy about heights. There have been times when standing on a tall ladder or near the edge of a cliff has made me dizzy and short of breath. In spite of those experiences, I was excited about taking my youth group to a large high ropes course in the Adirondacks last fall. The course had several hours’ worth of challenges and zip-lines to conquer. To my surprise, many of the kids and adult volunteers in our group didn’t share my enthusiasm. When I announced the trip, most were willing to go and attempt the course, but some of them were anxious and fearful.
That day, as I watched both youth and adults anxiously struggling to move through the course, I had to wonder why my own response was so different. It occurred to me that despite the harnesses and cables attached to us, many members of our group did not trust this equipment. In contrast, I was certain I could not fall. My absolute confidence in the safety equipment made it possible for me to have a very different experience. Without a fear of falling, I was able to enjoy the challenges, the people, and the beautiful day.
I wish I could say I have trusted God in my life the same way I trusted my safety equipment that day. Instead I have faced many situations in much the same way my youth and volunteers faced the ropes course: focused on potential pain and loss. As a result of fear and anxiety, I have struggled through situations, made poor decisions, behaved badly, and learned very little. Even though I did not suffer any lasting harm in these situations, I wasn’t aware of God’s hold on me, and I missed out on the richness that would have come from living in reliance on him.
In a recent Bible study with some of my youth group guys, we learned about Abraham and his story. As we considered his responses to God’s promises we were impressed by his faith, but when we read his response to God’s instruction to sacrifice Isaac, we found it difficult to relate to him. How could anyone trust God that much? In order for God’s promises to be fulfilled, to become the father of many nations, Abraham must have known that Isaac was essential. Sacrificing him would seem to be the ultimate demise of God’s plan and promise. And as a father, I could not help but think this was too much to ask of anyone.
But then I remembered—it wasn’t more than God was willing to do himself.
In reading today’s Scripture passage, I was greatly moved by Paul’s words when he wrote, “He [Abraham] is our father in the sight of God, in whom he believed—the God who gives life to the dead and calls into being things that were not.” Somehow Abraham must have been sure that God is the God of resurrection, and that no loss, no matter how great, is the end of the story.
I’m pretty sure that God will never test me like he tested Abraham. I hope I’ll never have to face any situation that has the potential for such loss or pain. I’m coming to realize that in comparison, my own challenges and trials are pretty insignificant. Nevertheless, I wonder how my daily life could be transformed by trusting God more completely, certain of his promises and confident that he will not let me fall.
Prayer: God, today may I remember that your ways are not my ways, and that your thoughts are higher than my own. In doing so, may my trust in you grow ever so slightly more.
For this year’s Lent devotions, the days follow the Common Lectionary texts. Each author was invited to: 1.Read the passage.
2.Read a couple passages before and after the assigned day.
3.Do something else for the day, keeping the passage in mind.
4.Find a word/phrase/concept that connects with your own experience. Reflect on that.
You are encouraged to do the same.
Lent Devotions
February 24
Nicole Brace is Camp Fowler’s former cook and wilderness guide. She is currently studying massage therapy in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
Psalm 22:23-31
In the northern Midwest, where I live, the end of February is still very much part of the long, cold winter that begins around November and often stays until late April. In the second week of Lent, the darkness falls before dinner and lingers past breakfast. The dawn “breaks” of course, but usually after many people are well into their day of work, and if you’re not outside or near a window to catch it, you won’t see it. You’ll only know it’s come by the fact that the day is no longer dark.
Today’s selection feels a little like that experience. In these verses, the Psalmist is confident, certain, prophetic. He’s speaking boldly into the future. The words are full of light. But now read the first two-thirds of Psalm 22—and hear the darkness that came before these words. You will hear some of the most affecting cries of fear and abandonment made in the human heart. They are the words cried out by Jesus on the cross as he was crucified (see Matthew 27:46): “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
What happened? How did the Psalmist change from cries of anguish to the certainty of prophecy and the excitement of hope? We don’t get to see it. But something happened. The Psalmist believes, “The poor shall eat and be satisfied; those who seek him shall praise the Lord. May your hearts live forever!”
If we don’t yet have the faith to believe what the Psalmist believes, perhaps today we might at least allow ourselves to wonder at what God could do in that place between darkness and dawn.
Prayer: God, today I choose to wonder what you are capable of.
For this year’s Lent devotions, the days follow the Common Lectionary texts. Each author was invited to: 1.Read the passage.
2.Read a couple passages before and after the assigned day.
3.Do something else for the day, keeping the passage in mind.
4.Find a word/phrase/concept that connects with your own experience. Reflect on that.
You are encouraged to do the same.
Lent Devotions
February 23
Pat Kinne previously served on summer camp staff and is currently principal at Bishop Grimes Junior/Senior High School in East Syracuse, New York. His children now attend summer camp.
Genesis 17:1-7, 15-16 (NIV)
“Father Abraham had many sons, many sons had Father Abraham. I am one of them, and so are you, so let’s all praise the Lord.” The words of that traditional Sunday school tune that I learned as a child are at the core of today’s reading. In Genesis 17:7, God makes his covenant with Abram: “I will establish my covenant as an everlasting covenant between me and you and your descendants after you for the generations to come, to be your God…” Re-read those words! “I will establish my covenant as an EVERLASTING COVENANT between me and you and your descendants after you…”
Now, I am no mathematician and logic puzzles confound me, but I remember this basic formula: If a then b, if b then c, so if a then c. Using that logic equation, according to the song I mentioned before, I am one of Father Abraham’s sons, so that makes me a descendant of Abraham, which means that I am a part of God’s everlasting covenant.
So, as we are on our Lenten walk to Good Friday and Easter Sunday, why is this Old Testament passage in our daily devotional reading? I think it calls us to pause and consider what it means to be in covenant with our Lord.
First, we must gain a clearer understanding that being in a covenant with God is drastically different than being in a contract with God. In a contract, if I do something in violation of the understood agreement, the contract is considered broken and becomes null and void. However, in a covenant, those involved agree to uphold their terms of the agreement regardless of whether or not the other parties do so. Far too often in society today people regard their relationship with God in terms of a contract, which from the beginning produces an air of futility. After all, who could ever successfully live up to the “terms” of a contract with God? To do so would mean perfection, and we know that we are a broken and sinful people who live in a broken and sinful world. Many Christians, therefore, live a life of guilt or even leave the church altogether because of the belief that they have failed God or cannot live up to their end of the bargain. Consequently many of these people also believe that God will not uphold his end of the contract due to their failures.
I pray for those individuals because they have missed the heart of the relationship that God calls us to. God does not want to enter into a contract with us, but rather he yearns for us to enter into covenant with God. God recognizes our frailty and brokenness but he still offers us his everlasting covenant. When we enter into covenant with God, he promises to be faithful even when we fall short—which will happen.
But we must also understand that this covenantal relationship is not a “free pass” to go and do whatever we want. Instead, we look to Genesis 17:5 and 17:15-16. Once we understand that we are in covenant with God, he gives us a new identity. Just as Abram became Abraham and Sarai became Sarah, we too are called to become a new creation in covenant with God. We take on a new identity and a new way of thinking and doing things once we have entered into covenant with God. And we earnestly seek to try to honor the covenant we have entered into by living in such a way that we bring glory and honor to God’s name, so hopefully people notice that there is something different and almost counter-cultural in how we live and think.
This Lent, my prayer for you is that you will think about and nurture your covenantal relationship with God. I pray that you will embrace your “new self” and bask in the warmth of God’s loving embrace, knowing that he loves you so much that he will not back out of his everlasting covenant with you—for God has called you by name and you are his. I pray that you know God loves you so much and takes his covenantal promises so seriously that he sent his only son to pay the price for your sins through his crucifixion, and to give you hope for the future through his resurrection. In response to his love, as the final words to that old song about Father Abraham say, “Let’s all praise the Lord.” Amen!
Prayer: Lord, thank you for loving me and for entering into an eternal covenant with me. I pray that as I begin my Lenten journey that I might make a change in my life that will allow me to honor that covenantal bond a little more deeply than I may be accustomed to. Father, just as Abram became Abraham and Sarai became Sarah, help me to undergo a transformation that will allow me to walk in a deeper relationship with you, and will allow me to grow and spread your love to future generations. Almighty God, I humbly ask this in the name of your son, my savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.
For this year’s Lent devotions, the days follow the Common Lectionary texts. Each author was invited to: 1.Read the passage.
2.Read a couple passages before and after the assigned day.
3.Do something else for the day, keeping the passage in mind.
4.Find a word/phrase/concept that connects with your own experience. Reflect on that.
You are encouraged to do the same.
Lent Devotions
February 19
Jeremy Bork is a volunteer cabin counselor at Camp Fowler and a student at Western Theological Seminary under care of Schenectady Classis.
1 Peter 3:18-22
We have begun a new season in the Christian year. After moving from Advent through Christmas and Epiphany, we find ourselves in Lent. It’s the time of the year when we remember and await the death and resurrection of Jesus. Like the life of a Christian, it is a season of living in the tension: of the already and the not yet, of life and death, of celebration and suffering. Some are living in this tension right now.
“Christ also suffered for sins once for all…in order to bring you to God.” We worship a God who suffers with us while drawing us toward God’s self—who invites us to be in relationship with God and with each other. To be in Christ is to be in union with all those who are in Christ. We are not alone. Lent is an invitation to be drawn closer to God and to one another, and this invitation invokes a response.
We’re all invited to participate in God’s redemption of creation. God has made and is making and will make all things new. Just as Christ was made alive in the spirit, we too are made alive in Christ. Looking to this hope, we live more fully into the present. Lent is a time to look at what the Lord has done and is doing and will do for the whole world.
Prayer: God of tension, when the brokenness and pain of this world seems to overpower joy and life, may we open our hearts, minds, and souls to see that you suffer with us. As you give us life through the Spirit, may we live more fully here and now, looking toward a future where you will wipe every tear from our eyes. Amen.
For this year’s Lent devotions, the days follow the Common Lectionary texts. Each author was invited to: 1.Read the passage.
2.Read a couple passages before and after the assigned day.
3.Do something else for the day, keeping the passage in mind.
4.Find a word/phrase/concept that connects with your own experience. Reflect on that.
You are encouraged to do the same.
Lent Devotions
February 18
Ash Wednesday
Gretchen Schoon Tanis was on summer staff at Camp Fowler and has her doctorate in ministry. She has worked as an adjunct instructor in youth ministry at Western Theological Seminary.
Psalm 51:1-17
With the beginning of Lent and the reading of Psalm 51, I can’t help but think of my favorite scene from the movie The Shawshank Redemption. Andy Dufresne (played by Tim Robbins), who has been wrongly imprisoned for years, finally digs his way to freedom one night during a thunderstorm and emerges in a river outside of the prison walls. He stands up in that river and sheds his prison uniform under the waters of the falling rain.
The scripture passage for today interplays with this scene in my mind. The psalmist says, “For I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me.” Put another way, our sin is like that of a prison uniform that announces our sin. But the psalmist also cries out to God, “Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin.” The waters of baptism, as we die to ourselves and rise with Christ, have the power of that river to shed us of the uniform of guilt, and we are washed clean with the power of that thunderstorm rain.
Prayer: During this season of Lent may our prayer rise up together: “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and put a new and right spirit within me.”
For this year’s Lent devotions, the days follow the Common Lectionary texts. Each author was invited to: 1.Read the passage.
2.Read a couple passages before and after the assigned day.
3.Do something else for the day, keeping the passage in mind.
4.Find a word/phrase/concept that connects with your own experience. Reflect on that.
You are encouraged to do the same.
Lent Devotions
Lent Devotions
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April 22: The End of the Gospel
Posted: 21 Apr 2014 06:59 AM PDT
Read: Mark 16:1-8
And they went out and fled from the tomb, for trembling and astonishment had seized them . . . (v. 8 ESV)
The oldest and most accurate copies of Mark end with verse 8, which says that when the women who came to the garden on Easter morning found Jesus’ grave empty, they “went out and fled from the tomb, for trembling and astonishment had seized them, and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.”
It’s an odd way to end a gospel, and people have been offering explanations and alternative conclusions ever since. But the basic facts are clear in Mark’s account. Jesus of Nazareth, the same man who was crucified, died, and was buried, rose again from the dead. His tomb was found to be empty on Easter morning. These facts powerfully declared that Jesus was the Son of God, as the apostle Paul would write in his letter to the Romans (Romans 1:4).
Here’s a thought. Maybe Mark’s ending is really just the beginning. Maybe we are supposed to supply the gospel’s succeeding chapters, as we go out into all the world with the good news that Jesus is alive, that he has conquered sin and the grave.
So what are we waiting for? The story isn’t finished yet. There’s still more to be written! –David Bast
Prayer: Lord Jesus, come and finish your work of salvation!
Words of Hope is an international media ministry, founded and owned by classes of the RCA, dedicated to building the church in the hard places. The Words of Hope devotional encourages readers to grow spiritually through daily Bible readings and prayer. To subscribe, please visit: woh.org/word/devotionals/.
Lent Devotions
Lent Devotions
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April 21: Freedom
Posted: 20 Apr 2014 07:08 PM PDT
Read: Romans 6:5-11
Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again. (v. 9)
When I was a student a popular folk song called Abraham, Martin and John referred to Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King Jr., and John F. Kennedy. It was a sad song, with a haunting refrain:
Has anybody here seen my old friend Martin?
Can you tell me where he’s gone?
He freed a lot of people but
It seems the good, they die young . . .
Abraham, Martin and John.
Why doesn’t Jesus fit this song? He was a good man who died young. So why don’t we sing sad songs about him? After all, we call the day the stock market crashed “Black Monday.” Why do we call the day Jesus died “Good Friday”?
Because we know how it all turned out. New Testament scholar Marcus Borg has observed that if there hadn’t been an Easter Sunday, there would be no Good Friday. He means that if Jesus had not risen from the dead, no one would have bothered to remember the story of his death. Crucifixions weren’t memorable, but a resurrection certainly was! So we know that death was not the end for Jesus. By his resurrection Jesus truly has “freed a lot of people.” United to him in faith, we have died to sin’s penalty and are alive to God, free to live for him. –David Bast
Prayer: Help me die to sin and live to you.
Words of Hope is an international media ministry, founded and owned by classes of the RCA, dedicated to building the church in the hard places. The Words of Hope devotional encourages readers to grow spiritually through daily Bible readings and prayer. To subscribe, please visit: woh.org/word/devotionals/.
Lent Devotions
Lent Devotions
Easter, April 20: On the Third Day
Posted: 19 Apr 2014 02:36 PM PDT
Read: Matthew 28:1-10
He is not here. (v. 6 ESV)
We all know the story. Several of the women closest to Jesus head out to the garden tomb early Sunday morning to finish the job they had not had time to complete on Friday afternoon. As they reach the grave they see to their astonishment that the stone sealing the tomb has been rolled back. The women are even more startled by the angel’s incredible news: “Don’t be afraid. You seek Jesus, who was crucified. He is not here.”
The angel meant that literally. He wasn’t speaking the way we sometimes do in funeral homes. (“You know, Jimmy, Grandpa isn’t really here.”) The angel wasn’t speaking of Jesus’ soul; he was talking about his body.
This Easter announcement has never been contradicted. To the angel’s “He is not here,” no one has ever been able to respond, “Wait! He is over here. There’s his body.” Jesus’ resurrection was a physical event. The New Testament says as clearly as it can that Jesus rose bodily from the tomb. Skeptics who argue that the gospel accounts of the resurrection are really just a symbolic way of saying that Jesus’ influence lived on in his disciples’ lives simply haven’t got the story straight.
As Christians, we base our faith on the fact that Jesus rose. More than that, we are staking our whole future on it. –David Bast
Prayer: Jesus lives, and so shall I.
Words of Hope is an international media ministry, founded and owned by classes of the RCA, dedicated to building the church in the hard places. The Words of Hope devotional encourages readers to grow spiritually through daily Bible readings and prayer. To subscribe, please visit: woh.org/word/devotionals/.
Lent Devotions
April 19: Dead and Buried
Posted: 19 Apr 2014 07:59 AM PDT
Read: John 19:31-42
. . . since the tomb was close at hand, they laid Jesus there. (v. 42 ESV)
After Jesus died, he was buried. It’s the last item of business to be checked off for every human being.
Corpses must be disposed of. What makes death so repulsive is not just the fear or the pain; it’s the indignity of the thing. This is why Jesus’ burial is so comforting. It means he went all the way through the experience of death for us, to the bitter end. He even became a corpse that had to be prepared and then carried away and buried like every other dead body. His identification with our mortality is complete. “He knows our frame, he remembers that we are dust,” affirms the psalmist. And we may be sure of it, because he once was dust himself. If Jesus could do that much for me, I know that he will be with me when I too am one day a corpse.
The prayer of committal in the Reformed Church’s funeral liturgy says that “by his rest in the tomb, Christ has sanctified the graves of his saints.” No matter how dark the place, our Lord has been there before us. So death is not the end for us. Even burial isn’t the end. –David Bast
Prayer: Thank you, Lord, for all you have done for me. Be near me now and in the hour of my death.
Words of Hope is an international media ministry, founded and owned by classes of the RCA, dedicated to building the church in the hard places. The Words of Hope devotional encourages readers to grow spiritually through daily Bible readings and prayer. To subscribe, please visit: woh.org/word/devotionals/.
Lent Devotions
Lent Devotions
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Good Friday, April 18: Beneath the Cross of Jesus
Posted: 17 Apr 2014 06:09 AM PDT
Read: John 19:17-30
Let us not tear it, but cast lots for it to see whose it shall be. (v. 24 ESV)
I know I’ve sung these words dozens of times; maybe you have too:
Beneath the cross of Jesus
I fain would take my stand–
The truth is that the cross of Jesus was not a nice place. None of us would really have wanted to stand beneath it. The only ones who were literally right there underneath Jesus’ cross were the soldiers. Having crucified him, these guards settled down to the more pleasant task of dividing Jesus’ possessions among themselves, while they waited for him to die.
I wonder which one of them won his seamless tunic and what he did with it. Did he sell it for a few coins? Did he trade it for a bottle to drink, or use it to hire a woman for the night? Or did he take it home, keep it for himself? What if he covered himself with that garment? In spiritual terms, that is exactly what we do when we trust in Christ for the forgiveness of our sins. His death becomes our righteousness. He covers our shame with his perfect obedience and sacrificial blood.
Jesus, thy blood and righteousness,
My beauty are, my glorious dress.
Midst flaming worlds, in these array’d,
With joy shall I lift up my head.
–David Bast
Prayer: Lord Jesus, may your blood cover my sin.
Words of Hope is an international media ministry, founded and owned by classes of the RCA, dedicated to building the church in the hard places. The Words of Hope devotional encourages readers to grow spiritually through daily Bible readings and prayer. To subscribe, please visit: woh.org/word/devotionals/.
St Croix Reformed Church 
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