Posted on July 12, 2020
Liam Byrnes
being renewed in our minds through practise
Entering into Advent | A Lectio Letter Preview
This is a preview of an article from my members-only newsletter The Lectio Letter. To find out more and to read this entire article head to LectioLetter.com
“We are adrift. I know that seems dramatic, but it becomes increasingly apparent that in this post-modern malaise our lives can often drift on without a meaningful sense of direction bar the odd spurt of intentionality or a passing moment of stirred emotion.
Into the fray walks, the much neglected practise of the Christian calendar. A calendar that was designed to imbue every year of our lives with a steady retelling of the Gospel. This lifetime immersion in the story which is intended to tell us how the world really is is desperately needed in a world in which we are thrown left and right by every new offer of a ‘big story’.
As Christians have discovered again and again throughout history, our individual, family, tribal, and national lives end up as small claustrophobic stories. Stories which, ultimately, fail at the task of weaving a narrative that catches up all of creation in the loving gaze of its creator.A fixation on these smaller stories, is, to return to the opening metaphor, like fixing the vessel of our lives to an untethered buoy, somehow believing that it is, in fact, an anchor. The buoy may help us to position ourselves, but it does not bring us into contact with the firm and stable structures that underpin our very existence.
The Lectio Letter | Issue #1
Do not misunderstand me, it is not that attending to our personal, familial and cultural stories is unimportant. If we neglect to take stock of these and how they have shaped us, we will not have a keen enough grasp on our own reality to offer it back to God. But we cannot lose grip on the main thing, to take what is ours and offer onto the altar of God which refines, transfigures, and multiplies our small lives into a participation in the everlasting life of God…”
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