Resources for the Christian Year

After an unforgettable three years, the charismatic teacher who called you and your brother James to follow him says, ‘Right, lets go to Jerusalem.’ It’s thrilling to be setting out on the next stage of the adventure. But life in the company of Jesus is not for the faint-hearted. Certainly there’s fun as you mess about with the other young disciples. But it’s pretty edgey too, not knowing who is going to turn up next and what might be expected of you. And as the days pass by, the huge demands on Jesus as he heals and teaches invoke both a strange tenderness and a growing dread of why exactly you are journeying to the holy city... Looking through the eyes of the disciple John, The Journey follows Luke’s chronology from Luke 9:51, as Jesus ‘set his face to go to Jerusalem’. Absorbing, exuberant and affective, it offers daily (weekday) readings for Lent, from Ash Wednesday to Good Friday, with a poem for each Saturday. It is suitable for use by individuals or groups.

Lent is one of the three 40-day seasons in the church's year, besides Advent and the period from Easter to Pentecost. The name itself, Lent, derives from an ancient word meaning 'spring' or 'long', referring to the time of year when days are beginning to lengthen and the world is turning from winter cold and dark to the warmth and promise of spring. During this time, the church calls us to a special period of prayer, self-examination and teaching – and this book has been written to accompany you through that period, a time of turning from winter to spring, from death to life. Dust & Glory ranges across the whole business of living and believing, where the questions are as important as the answers and may call us to deep heart-searching. The goal is always to draw us to authentic faith – a way of living and believing that is real and vulnerable, strong in knowing its limits, rooted in joy and wonder, blessed with the healing and merciful presence of God. Such faith acknowledges both the dust of our mortality and the glory that keeps breaking in with unexpected life, hope and new beginnings.