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Lent: Making a space for grace by Inez Torres Davis

Jesus spent 40 days in prayerful self examination and fasting in the wilderness. Lent, the church’s season of penitence and baptismal renewal, is the 40-day span from Ash Wednesday to Easter. Christians observe Lent by prayer, fasting, and service. It is a quiet season of looking inward and preparing for the celebration of Jesus’ resurrection at Easter.

Some commit to observing a meaningful Lenten season by giving up something, such as lattes or chocolate. Others take on a spiritual discipline, such as volunteering with a non-profit organization or adding Bible reading to their daily schedules.

Consider spending these 40 days with prayer in a sacred space. You can create your own sacred space — whether it is in a corner of your apartment, a rug in your dorm room, or not even a room at all. For 40 days, make a place in your life for the Spirit to blow in.

The time and the place
When we take time away from our busy daily schedules, we begin to strengthen our spiritual lives. We women may have been taught to put ourselves and our needs last. For the 40 days of Lent, however, let’s give ourselves the time and space to ponder: How are things between God and me?

Make time
Treat your prayer time like any other time that you carve out in your day. Try waking up 15 minutes early each morning — if you are not an early riser, take 15 minutes after you eat breakfast or dinner.

Clear a spot
Locate a table or clear a surface on a shelf, removing any clutter. Pick a few objects that help you connect with your spiritual center such as a photo, a Bible, and a candle.

Journal
With a prayer journal, you can record passages that give you strength. You can also add the names or pictures of people for whom you wish to pray.

Try a Bible study
Café offers discussion questions for individuals and groups after every issue. Visit “Back issues” to see past Café issues that you might like to do by yourself or with a group.

Sound on
Try incorporating music into your prayer experience. Take a moment to pray or listen to music. Focus on your thoughts while you experience the melody. Spend some time writing about the thoughts and feelings that came to you while you listened.

Explore
Learn more about sacred spaces in the Women of the ELCA resource, Sacred Spaces that is due soon. You can incorporate a wealth of objects and rituals to enhance your experience.

Beyond the walls
Your sacred space does not have to fit into a room. It can connect with the natural world. Whether you are looking out a window or walking through a forest, find a place and start to pray.

Lent is a time for sending fewer instant messages and adding more prayer. Lent calls for taking fewer hours to explore YouTube and more hours to explore the possibilities of God’s call and our baptism. Lent is our time to be more God-aware.

This season reminds us that we all have a need to be deeply touched by God’s Spirit. The idea of shaping a personal space to nurture our spirits and our relationship with God doesn’t sound so farfetched during Lent. It is a good time to start something new, personal, and sacred.

Beyond the sanctuary
Many Lutheran traditions tend to emphasize spiritual growth in communal disciplines, such as participating in worship and taking part in Bible studies. While these are essential, they don’t encompass every aspect of our spiritual lives. A personal sacred space for prayer and meditation provides a place for spiritual self-care that enriches and supports the good habits of regular worship and study within a faith community.

What is sacred space? Sacred space can mean many things. It is a place where we make room for the sacred. It may mean different things at different stages of our lives. This space is one way we respond to the Spirit of Life, to Christ within us, to a Spirit that seeks fuller expression in all the areas of our lives. A labyrinth is one example of sacred space. A garden is another. And a meditation room is yet another.

At home
I asked women in their 20s and 30s where, when, and how they recognize sacred space in their lives. Several had a one-word answer–home. Their homes are the sacred spaces they create for themselves. (continued on next page)

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And whenever you pray, do not be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, so that they may be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. But whenever you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you. Matthew 6:5–6

In this passage, Jesus recommends a specific personal prayer practice. Yet how many of us have created our own space for regular conversations with God? Did we mistakenly learn along the way that we are not spiritual beings who require a space for daily communion with our Source?

There appears a direct connection between the life and ministry of Jesus and his practice of finding sacred spaces in nature. Jesus spent time in the temple in the midst of the great city, but he also knew how to disappear into nature for conversations with God. After teaching his disciples and dismissing the crowds, Jesus found a sacred space in nature to pray (Matthew 14: 22–23).

On the night of his betrayal, Jesus knelt alone in an olive garden and had the most moving heart-to-heart talk with God any of us could imagine. Jesus isn’t the only one in Scripture to pray alone. Moses privately talked with God on a mountain. Peter prayed alone on a roof and received one of the deepest healing revelations in the life of the church!

For there is one God; there is also one mediator between God and humankind, Christ Jesus, himself human, who gave himself a ransom for all this was attested at the right time.
1 Timothy 2: 5–6

We are members of a marvelous priesthood! We can seek healing and wholeness with holy greed. The Source established our kinship. God established our acceptance through Christ. Creating and using a personal sacred space supports a clear focus on and toward God.

Martin Luther viewed God's grace as an invasion of daily life. Luther — like Jesus — blurred the distinction between the sacred and the secular. Jesus did this by using everyday matters to illustrate the truths about the kingdom of God. Luther did this by talking about renewing our baptism daily, living daily life as the baptized (see A Treatise on Good Works by Martin Luther, Kessinger Publishing, 2004). We can practice rushing into that grace!

Martin Luther believed that holy actions would spring up in our lives, not as premeditated works designed to please God but rather as the natural fruits of a life focused on an intimate relationship with Jesus.

This is the life of faith, according to Luther, a life in which one recognizes that while sin never departs, grace always invades to draws us closer to Jesus. Sacred spaces invite this invasion!

Counting steps, exercise, and healthful eating are good self-care for the body; our souls also require good self-care. Prayer and other spiritual disciplines such as meditation and visioning are examples of good self-care.

Luther saw the home as the first school in all that is sacred. Each home can have a sacred space to remind us that in every moment we are in relationship with God. Such a space nurtures our awareness of relationship with the Divine.

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