Grace Senior AP English Class
Lenten Devotional 2024
Message from Mr. Blaine Davis, Senior AP English Teacher
For the past several years, I have worked with my AP Senior English class to develop reading and interpreting practices that are distinctly Christian. After all, in a class geared around interpreting a wide variety of texts, it would all be for naught if we didn’t also apply those skills to the Biblical texts as well. To this end, we have focused on writing devotionals for different seasons and moments of the Church calendar year, which allows us to think about our place in the drama of the divine story of God and practice the skills of interpretation.
This year, we focus our devotional efforts on exploring the meaning of the Lenten season. “Lent” comes from an Old English word for lengthening, which is associated with the lengthening of the days as we move out of winter and into spring. The original name of the season, though, is quadragesima, which means “the fortieth day” in Latin. Lent is the season of forty days that begins on Ash Wednesday and ends on Saturday before the Resurrection.
The centrality of the number 40 gives insight into the meaning of the season. One of the master narratives of the Old Testament is the Exodus, the story of how God liberated his people from bondage in Egypt and led them for 40 years through the wilderness until they were brought into the Promised Land. The motion of the Exodus is one that we rehearse each Lenten season. The point of Lent isn’t to blindly give up a particular pet vice, but rather to remember and participate in the story of how God is liberating us from bondage to sin, death, and the devil in order to bring us into the Kingdom he has established for us through the death and resurrection of Jesus, who is our true Passover Lamb.
As a Senior English class, we invite you to Come Exodus With Us. Over the course of the Lenten season we will provide four groups of devotionals that will each in turn provide Educational insight into Lenten themes, Encouraging meditations on the weekly lectionary of the season and some Exodus suggestions of how to participate in the season.
Each group of devotionals will be accompanied by a series of readings assigned to the day or week in which it is published along with a written prayer called a Collect, which can be used as a devotional focus or centering prayer for the day or week. The devotionals use the designated readings as the basis for our meditations. We invite you to make these passages part of your Lenten reading and prayers. Finally, we hope that as you journey towards the cross and the empty tomb, that you will find your place in this beautiful story of God’s redemptive work on our behalf.
May you have a blessed Lent,
Blaine Davis
Senior AP English Teacher