This Lent book explores biblical stories and characters that exemplify a whole range of relationships, in good times and bad. Relationships are defined very widely, to include even people who don't see themselves in 'relationship'. The stories are related to common emotions - love, friendship, rivalry, conflict, trust, hatred, fear - and linked with 21st-century attitudes, culture and moral dilemmas.
The book covers OT stories as well as NT, and explores dysfunctional as well as functional relationships to make clear how experiences of loss and failure - which culminated, for Jesus, in the Cross - are inevitably part of our relationships, but can be healed by the Resurrection. The making of choices is pivotal in our life journey and these meditations focus on key moments of decision, and their consequences. This will often involve reflection on the power of temptation: the ways in which biblical characters respond to it, and their varying success in withstanding it.
The reflections range widely, but start with Jesus' temptations and conclude with stories from Holy Week and Easter, so that the relevance to Lent is maintained.
The book covers OT stories as well as NT, and explores dysfunctional as well as functional relationships to make clear how experiences of loss and failure - which culminated, for Jesus, in the Cross - are inevitably part of our relationships, but can be healed by the Resurrection. The making of choices is pivotal in our life journey and these meditations focus on key moments of decision, and their consequences. This will often involve reflection on the power of temptation: the ways in which biblical characters respond to it, and their varying success in withstanding it.
The reflections range widely, but start with Jesus' temptations and conclude with stories from Holy Week and Easter, so that the relevance to Lent is maintained.
