Lent is a good time for self-reflection, but God also wants us to enjoy good things. One thing I do as a spiritual discipline is read the Bible. One way to read the Bible is to compare yourself to the standards recorded there, to use it as a ruler to measure yourself against. But the Bible is, itself, just a good thing. There's so much beauty of language and thought in the literature of the Bible. There is so much good in the human lives depicted in the Bible--often layered upon the bad in a "both/and" kind of way. There is so much that points to God's goodness and God's love for us in the Bible.
For Lent, I am adding a spiritual discipline for myself. In the Service of Daily Prayer that we have each weekday at 8:00am, I read the daily lectionary. Because of my understanding of the theology of worship, reading of scripture requires interpretation, so I talk briefly about the scriptures that we read. I don't prepare a full exegesis, and sometimes my comments boil down to "I don't know, but I'll go look it up." Starting Ash Wednesday, 2022, I'm going to sit down at my desk after the Service of Morning Prayer and write on this blog one of the things that I appreciated about the scripture that day, one homage to scripture, one way that I enjoyed scripture for scripture's sake. It isn't always about me. This blog will be about appreciating scripture just because we can enjoy scripture.
A word about the title: I wanted something that reflected the beauty of the scripture. I liked the word Homage, but it doesn't really go anywhere ("Homage to Scripture" was a possible title). I went with Lauds for the Lectionary, reflecting the fact that I really appreciate scripture and am praising scripture for scriptures sake, mostly because I'm a sucker for alliteration.
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