V. Seven Mini Meditations For Your Lenten Reflection: What Should Christians Be Up To Today?
Welcome to this series of seven short meditations for the seven weeks of Lent – these Mini Meditations. This represents a departure from my practice of several years now: issuing occasional blogs. I plan, the Lord willing, to return to that practice after Easter.
Here, in a Lenten mode, I’m attempting to do something orderly – and something that anyone can handle, however busy you may perceive yourself to be this Lenten season. A once-a-week reading!
Thank you for tuning in – and I look forward to hearing from you in response, should the Spirit so move you. If things work out as I hope they will, you will be receiving one of these Mini Meditations each week in Lent.
—Paul Santmire, Ash Wednesday, 2025
I. Coming to Terms with an Era of Apparent Church Decline
II. Understanding Our Post-Christian World
III. Attending to the Signs of These Times
IV. Spiritual Discernment or Looking Before You Leap
V. Reclaiming the Child Within
VI. Revisiting Your Local Church
VII. Growing Up Into Christ: But Really Growing Up
Mini Meditation Five: Reclaiming the Child Within
I believe that the following anecdote about Martin Luther is factual, since I have repeated it many times over the years. The Reformer had just finished preaching a rousing sermon about discipleship on some saint’s day. Luther and some coworkers had retreated to a nearby pub, presumably for lunch. A young, avid follower of Luther ran up to the table where the great leader was sitting, and blurted out something like this: “Dr. Luther, Dr. Luther, after such a sermon, how can you just sit there?” To this, Luther responded, now famously: “As I drink my Wittenberg beer, the Gospel runs its course.”
Luther – just about every scholar will agree with this – had a huge confidence in the “proclamation of the Word.” He once even referred to a church building as a “mouth house.” But that kind of theological statement blankets a rich world of spiritual complexities. It’s so adult! It’s so serious! I propose that first and foremost we think of a church building as a – playhouse. What a beautiful idea for the children of God!
I know. I know. Haven’t great Christian teachers like Dietrich Bonhoeffer called for a new kind of spiritual maturity in our churches? But stay with me. Maybe if I’m going to reclaim the mission of the Church today, I should think afresh, among many other things, about the child within me. Maybe I should also find a way to think of the church building, more particularly, not just as a mouth house, but also as a playhouse.
Not for nothing was the First Epistle of John addressed to young children, as well as to resolute adults and to wise older folks (see I John 13f.). Was it Jesus, by the way, who said that the Reign of God belongs to kids (see Mark 10:14ff.)? So next Sunday as you approach your pew will you think of yourself as one of the Muppets? Probably not. But do think about reclaiming the child within you.
To that end, you might want to recall the following thoughts as you stand up for the first hymn. From the modern Greek novelist, Nikos Katzanzakies (words that I here update generically): “When I wish to speak of the sea, of humans, or of God in my writings, I gaze down into my breast and listen carefully to what the child within me says. This child dictates to me; and if it sometimes happens that I come close to these great forces of sea, humans, and God…, I owe it to the child who still lives within me. I become a child again to enable myself to view the world always for the first time.”
(to be continued)