Christians are a resurrection folk. For us, the story gets good the moment they take Jesus off the cross and shut him up inside a tomb. We love this story. What we don’t like is the waiting God’s work requires. We don’t like the silent stretches where we can’t tell if God is finished or if there is still something more on the horizon that we can’t see yet. This is normal. We all feel this way. This is especially true of us in the seasons of life that are marked by doing without or absence. Like Lent.

Thanks to Pierre L’Enfant, Andrew Ellicott, and Benjamin Banneker, we are blessed to live in a city where the urban design strikes a good balance between form and function, helping us easily align and orient ourselves just based on where we stand. Now imagine trying to navigate the cowpaths of Boston (or even Seven Corners just a bit outside the city boundaries!) without a smartphone GPS and see how fast we can get frustrated, anxious, and downright hopeless.

When our daughter Annie died last summer, our easy-going, sometimes stressful, but overall happy life was changed. Darkness filled every moment of every day, and in those first few months we felt little reprieve or hope. We had to make a choice about who we wanted to be after our daughter’s death and who we wanted to trust.

Several hundred years before Christ’s birth, Isaiah prophesied that God would send His servant to be “a covenant for the people, a light for the nations, to open the eyes that are blind…” (Isaiah 42:6-7). In all the Old Testament, there is no record of someone blind from birth being miraculously healed (9:32). And then, shortly after claiming that he is God (8:58), Jesus healed a man born blind.

In this passage, Jesus is responding to his critics, the Pharisees, and their disbelief surrounding His identity. The last sentence Jesus spoke in this portion of scripture concludes with the brief statement: "I am." These two words, while succinct, are extremely powerful. "I am" is a self-declaration, by Jesus, identifying Himself as God. It is also the simplest expression of God's nature: He is. He is enough. He is all. He is God.

The Jewish leaders in this passage held fast to their claim as descendants of Abraham, a man known for his belief in God. Jesus had some tough things to say. Although they were claiming closeness with God through their tie to Abraham, it is clear from their responses and failure to recognize Jesus that they didn’t actually know God. While they were physical descendants of Abraham, Jesus pointed out that their behavior does not reflect that they are truly Abraham’s children. Jesus said, “If you were Abraham's children, you would be doing the works Abraham did” (John 8:39b).

Lent is a soul-stretching season of self-reflection, when we intentionally cease from trying to paper over the cracks of our brokenness, choosing instead to let the light of Christ shine into the darkness of our own hearts.

Lent is a season that Christians use as an opportunity for sober reflection on what Jesus went through in the weeks leading up to His Passion. The following seven weeks will serve as a time of reflection for Redemption Hill. Each week we will have a devotional that will correspond with the sermon from our Sunday Gathering.