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Christianity Today, February (Web-only), 2008 |

Excerpt

Opening a Door into Prayer

A reflection on solitude during Lent, excerpted from Small Surrenders: A Lenten Journey.

Emilie Griffin | posted 2/06/2008 09:13AM

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The poet Kay Ryan says, in her poem "Shark's Teeth," that "Everything contains some silence." She writes as though rest could be measured in small shark's tooth fragments angled inside our noise. This is a poet's construct, but it is somehow true. When I am in the coffeehouse, with my journal open on the table, I am surrounded by noise: coffeehouse workers taking orders from customers and joking with each other, recorded music playing over a loudspeaker, muffled conversation at nearby tables, traffic outside. But Ryan imagines that an hour in the city somehow holds within it "remnants of a time when silence reigned. …" I think she is right. Like the ancients, she harks back to a forgotten time, an age of gold, a silence that governed everything.

Is this a holy silence? Ryan doesn't say so, and maybe she isn't sure. But Christians believe the voice of God permeates the universe and can be heard if only we slow down and tune into the place where silence reigns.

Related Elsewhere:

Small Surrenders is available from ChristianBook.com and other retailers.

Other articles about Lent include:

Let's Lengthen Lent | The season can be a beautiful and deeply moving experience of walking with Jesus to the cross. (March 1, 2000)

The Challenge of the Lenten Season | Evangelical Protestants are caught between freedom in Christ and sacred observance. (A Christianity Today editorial, March 1, 2000)

Reflections: Lenten Inventory | Quotations to stir heart and mind. (February 1, 2004)

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February (Web-only) 2008, Vol. 52

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Ephrem Hagos

Posted: February 07, 2008 6:34 AM

Why is Christianity today (no pun intended) so unlike Christianity in the 1st Century? Do the teachings of Jesus Christ really require so many revisions and updatings to make the Gospel look more and more like the secular world around it and, therefore, more acceptable? Take, for example, "Prayer" structured with introspection, mind-clearing, 'shopping list', etc. Where do anyone of them fit into the model of prayer --prayer only about the highest Kingdom-priorities in exchange for all the things we need knowing and acting in faith that our Father already knows what we need before we ask Him (Matt. 6: 7-15, 33). Weren't these the reasons behind some of the miracles in the Gospels that we envy so much?

Robert W. Robinson jr.

Posted: February 06, 2008 2:49 PM

I don't think your question was fair, as an Eastern Orthodox Christian, we don't observe Great Lent untill March 10, Holy Pascha ( Easter) is April 27 for the whole Orthodox world. And we also have no ash wednesday, our lent begins on a monday. Also I would request that you have more news about the Orthodox Church. You didn't have anything about the receint Death of the Greek Orthodox Patriarch in Greece.

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