ReSource Lent course Week 1 : Seasons of change
Bill Goodman and Alison Morgan
Things you will need for this session:
· Pictures, photographs or objects to represent the 4 seasons
· Sheets of paper (A4 is a good size), glue sticks, and saucers
containing lots of little pieces of paper or tissue paper in four
colours, chosen to represent the four seasons (for example, yellow for
spring, green for summer, brown or red for autumn, and grey for winter)
· Music chosen to represent the 4 seasons
Welcome
20 minutes
Begin by welcoming people to the group. It is best if you establish an
informal atmosphere from the start; you may want to have music playing
in the background, or to offer members something to drink as they
arrive.
When everyone has gathered and made themselves comfortable, invite them
to introduce themselves briefly to one another. If the group has fewer
than 10 members it’s easiest to do this by asking them to share
their name and something about themselves in turn. If there are more
than 10 members you may prefer to divide them into threes.
Introducing the course
10 minutes
People may have different understandings and expectations of what this
course is all about, so it will be helpful to start by giving them some
background information and an overview of the things you will be doing
together.
Explain that you want to begin by offering a brief summary of what we
understand by the season of Lent. The main points to make are these:
· Lent is a particular season
The early Christians fasted for one or two days just before Easter.
This developed into a regular season of preparation for Easter, which
became known in English as Lent (from the old English word for
‘spring’).
Many people today sense a real need to slow down, to rethink their
commitments and priorities, to make time for reflection and prayer
– but somehow they never get round to it. Lent offers an
opportunity to do just that. It’s in the calendar; the dates are
already set, this course is being provided. Let’s say to
ourselves: ‘Come to the spiritual feast – all is now
ready!’
· Lent is a limited period
The traditional aim of Lent is to help believers rehearse the life of
Jesus through their own prayers and actions, as a seasonal spiritual
exercise which will draw them closer to God. It runs from Ash
Wednesday, when we offer prayers of penitence and faith, to Easter
Sunday, when we celebrate the new life which is ours through the death
and resurrection of Jesus.
The fact that Lent is a limited period is also challenging. This group
will not simply offer a warm, fuzzy experience; nor will it just drift
aimlessly along. The aim is to allow God to change us for the better
– both as individuals and together as a group or church. We seek
a practical outcome by the end of this period. We look to God with
eager expectation, at the same time as we look forward to the
life-changing events of Easter.
· Lent is for all
From earliest times, Lent has been linked with baptism. New believers
were instructed and prepared during Lent for their baptism at Easter.
Lent also became a season for established believers to put on the
armour of God and renew their spiritual life in disciplined prayer and
repentance, leading to restoration of those who had fallen into sin and
to a deeper level of fellowship and spiritual growth.
· Lent is a gift
Some people may remember the idea of ‘giving up something for
Lent’ – a faint and rather feeble echo of the tradition of
penitence. We may prefer to challenge people to ‘take up
something for Lent’, and particularly to take up this Lent
course. Here is a gift which they can take hold of. But doing so may,
of course, involve putting down something else...
Things they need to know about the course
Explain to the group that in past centuries the observance of Lent
was a collective activity based on the core elements of prayer, fasting
and the giving of alms – not unlike the modern Muslim observance
of Ramadam. In meeting as a group we hope to be able to encourage and
strengthen one another in this way. But it’s good also to make
space for private prayer and reflection, so in addition to the group
meeting there is a booklet of spiritual exercises for each person to do
at home, if they would like to (explain that they don’t have to,
but they will get more out of the course if they do!).
What is the outcome we are hoping for?
The season of Lent runs for 40 days, modelled on the 40 days spent
by Jesus in prayer and fasting following his baptism in the Holy
Spirit. For Jesus, this period of prayer and fasting was a time of
preparation for the three years of ministry which began immediately
afterwards. So it is important for us to understand that taking Lent
seriously may bring lasting personal change – Easter may be the
end of a story, but it’s also the start of a new and much bigger
one. There’s a lot more to Lent than giving up chocolate!
Group discussion
10 minutes
Ask people to share their experience of Lent. What comes into their
minds when they hear the word? Has Lent been an important part of
anyone’s spiritual journey? Have they ever given anything up for
Lent? What effect did that have on their spiritual lives?
Now ask them to share one hope they each have for the course. Why have
they come? What are they looking to find? Is there anything they are
worried about? Affirm everyone’s answers, and explain that we
will return to this question at the very end of the course when we look
back over our time together.
Beginning with prayer
Ask someone to pray, for you as leader and for the group as a whole, that God would be with you as you travel together.
Seasons of change
15 minutes
If you can, find four pictures or photographs, or four objects which
represent the four seasons. Put them on a table where everyone can see
them, or prop them on a mantelpiece or against a wall.
Point out that when God made the world, he made it according to a seasonal pattern.
· Ask someone to read Genesis 1.14.
God’s relationship with the living world is governed by the seasons. Psalm 104 is a poem celebrating this.
· Ask someone to read Psalm 104.
Ask the group why they think God chose to build this seasonal pattern into the life of the world he made?
What would it be like to live in a world with no seasons? Would it make any difference to our relationship with God?
You may get some interesting and creative answers, particularly if
people have experience of living in places where the seasons are not
clearly delineated. But the main thing you need to tease out is that
life itself depends on the existence of the seasons – can we
imagine the fulness of the autumn harvest without a preceding summer of
flowers and insects, or the green growth of spring without the
cleansing cold of winter to prepare the ground?
Now point out that Jesus often taught by drawing attention to the
pattern of the natural world around him. Ask them why they think this
was. Was it just because that was what was there, in the same way that
we tend to use illustrations from our own technological and urbanised
environment?
Help them to see that there is a link between the created world and the
spiritual world. When Jesus was explaining the spiritual life he chose
to use stories about farmers sowing seed and getting a harvest, about
nesting birds and knowing plants by their fruits, not just because
these things were there in front of him, but because there is a natural
affinity between the spiritual life and the life of the world around us
- both are created by and depend on the same Holy Spirit. (You may like
to point them to Genesis 1.2 or Psalm 104.30, both of which suggest
that the physical world is ‘breathed’ by the Spirit of God.
The words ‘spirit’ and ‘breath’ have the same
root in both Hebrew and Greek).
Jesus’ use of comparisons from the created world
‘arises from a conviction that there is no mere analogy, but an
inward affinity, between the natural order and the spiritual
order’ .
CH Dodd
Why is it not rational to suppose that the corporeal and visible world
should be designedly made and constituted in analogy to the more
spiritual, noble, and real world?’
Jonathan Edwards
Ask the group if they think the spiritual life can be seen in
seasonal terms, with patterns of growth and of inactivity, with times
of sowing and times of reaping?
· Which is their favourite season, and why?
Now explain that Lent is a season which goes from the barrenness of
winter to the new life of spring, and that you hope that for everyone
in the group it will be a time of growth. Some members of the group
will be in tougher places than others - for some the ground will be
already ploughed and prepared for the growth to come; for others there
will be a hard crust to soften, or a tangle of weeds still to be
cleared. But you are confident that just as the Lord provides for the
material needs of his creatures in Psalm 104, so he will provide for
your spiritual needs as you meet and pray together during the coming
weeks.
A practical exercise
20 minutes
Explain to the group that you would like them now to think about the
pattern of their own spiritual lives, and to reflect on where they are
at the moment. Different people like to reflect in different ways, so
it’s good to offer a choice of activities to facilitate this (the
suggestions which follow can all be done at the same time). Encourage
people to feel free to move around the room as they do this, and invite
them to choose one of the following options:
Provide sheets of paper (A4 is a good size), glue sticks, and saucers
containing lots of little pieces of paper or tissue paper in four
colours, chosen to represent the four seasons (for example, yellow for
spring, green for summer, brown or red for autumn, and grey for
winter). Invite people to make a collage representing their own
spiritual life as it is at the moment. Perhaps they have experienced
different seasons in their relationship with God, times perhaps of
blessing and fruitfulness, times of pain and dryness, times of growth
and times of inactivity. Where are they at the moment? How would they
represent this pictorially?
Play some music, chosen to stimulate thoughts of seasonal patterns,
either natural ones or spiritual ones – for example,
Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, or a CD of Gregorian chant or music from
Taizé to represent the liturgical seasons of the church, or a
piece of contemporary music such as Green Day’s ’When
September Ends’, or Coldplay’s ‘We Never
Change’. Invite people to pray individually about their own
relationship with God as they listen to the music. Do they recognise
any kind of pattern as they look back over their spiritual lives?
Offer pens and paper and suggest that some people might like to write a
poem or a prayer on a seasonal theme, either looking back over their
lives and thinking about the different phases of them, or thinking
about their relationship with God and which season would best describe
it at the moment.
Looking at scripture
15 minutes
After about 15 minutes invite them to go back to where they were
sitting, and explain that you are going to look at a passage of
scripture together, and that you will come back to what they have done
after that.
Turn to Ecclesiastes 3 and ask someone to read verses 1 to 15.
This is a well known passage. The author Ecclesiastes calls himself
‘The Teacher’. He is either King Solomon, or a later writer
trying to look at the world from Solomon’s perspective. The whole
book is a reflection on life, the way we live it and the values we
hold.
Verses 1 to 8 quote a poem. It’s a simple poem, reflecting on the
comings and goings of our lives. We live in a framework which is given
to us, a framework of time which brings different experiences and
circumstances.
· What do they notice about the pattern of the poem in the first 8 verses?
Help them to evaluate the repetition of the phrase ‘a time’
– time comes, it goes, it comes again, like waves crashing on the
shore of our lives - and there is nothing we can do to influence it.
It’s a cycle in which our lives are embedded whether we like it
or not, and over which we have little or no control.
Now make sure they pick up the contrast between this repeated opening
and the rest of the verse. This second part of each verse is our part,
the part where we choose our responses. Time flows ever onwards, like
waves on the beach; but we have to learn when and how to ride them.
Now invite them to look at verses 9 to 15. Here the Teacher reflects on
the poem. He changes the perspective from ours to God’s.
· What strikes them about this reflection?
Be prepared to offer your own responses to help the discussion. One
obvious thing is that God wants us to enjoy our work and our time off.
But the main point is that he has made us with an awareness of time and
eternity so that even as we live our busy lives and cope with the
things that come to us (good and bad) we will know that in everything
we depend on him. It is only when we learn to see our lives in the
context of God’s provision and purposes that we will find
contentment. The trick is to stand back, and to look at the pattern of
our own experience in this broader context.
Now explain that this is what the group is all about. Tell them that it
is your hope and prayer that as you together offer yourselves to God
for this season of Lent, he will help you to see the bigger picture, to
understand more clearly where you are in your own lives and in your
relationship with him. Help the group to see that you are looking
forward to this journey!
Praying for one another
15 minutes
Now say that you hope to end each meeting with a time of prayer. It may
be hard for people to pray together, particularly if they are not used
to informal prayer of this kind, or if they do not know one another
very well. Explain that you hope they will take the risk of trusting
one another, because it is as we take risks that we find blessings. If
people are happy to pray but not confident to pray aloud, you might
like to suggest that they pray silently but say ‘Amen’
aloud when they have finished, so that the others know they have prayed.
Invite them to go into threes and to share with one another the
picture, poem or prayer which they have made, and then to pray for one
another. The prayers they request of one another may arise out of the
exercise; they may be things prompted by some other part of the
evening, or they may be simply a desire that they would be able to meet
with God during the week ahead.
After they have finished praying, give each person a copy of the course
member’s booklet and suggest that they might like to follow some
of the spiritual exercises given for this week. Some people may like to
do all the exercises; others may prefer to choose one or two and repeat
them throughout the week - different people prefer to do things in
different ways.
Ask them to make sure they bring the booklet with them next week, along
with anything they would like to share from their experience of
following the exercises. Make sure that you are able to share something
yourself to start them off.
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