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Preparing Your Heart for Lent and Easter with Malcolm Guite

With twinkling eyes, a wild beard, wit, and a profound understanding of the Gospel, acclaimed poet, songwriter and Cambridge Chaplain Malcolm Guite will help prepare our hearts and minds for the sacred season of Lent and Easter.

Dr. Guite will point to ways to deepen our prayer life, come alongside others, face the pain of Christ’s suffering and know the joy of the resurrection!  His approach to drawing near to Jesus through the Scriptures, poetry and music will move your heart and give your mind much to contemplate.


Malcolm Guite's Lent Anthology:

 

The Word in the Wilderness:
A Poem a Day for Lent and Easter
Lent is a time to reorient ourselves, clarify our minds, slow down, recover from distraction and focus on the values of God's kingdom. Poetry, with its power to awaken the mind, is an ideal companion for such a time. This collection enables us to turn aside from everyday routine and experience moments of transfigured vision as we journey through the desert landscape of Lent and find refreshment along the way.
Click here for more information!

CSLI Resources to Accompany Malcolm's Book

A scripture reading to accompany the Lenten devotional.

Click here for PDF copy.

Select poems from Sounding The Seasons Malcolm Guite were read during the event.

Click here for a PDF copy.

Reflections

Pastor and author Gavin Ortlund wrote this about C.S. Lewis’s poems: “I love his poems. They demonstrate the same spiritual insight and facility with words that characterize his prose and make him my favorite writer.”

Now what was the sort of “hole” man had got himself into? He had tried to set up on his own, to behave as if he belonged to himself.

In the earliest days of Christianity an “apostle” was first and foremost a man who claimed to be an eyewitness of the Resurrection… to preach Christianity meant primarily to preach the Resurrection…

C.S. Lewis’s last sermon, A Slip of the Tongue, was preached at Magdalene College, Cambridge by candlelight. He delivered a powerful message that laid out what is required of the person who chooses to follow Jesus...

In Narnia, there is no stream other than Aslan’s that can keep one from dying of thirst. In this world, Christ alone offers us eternal life through His gift of living water.

Universalism, the false teaching which negates the consequences of sin and evil and marries heaven and hell into one eternal paradise for all, was just as prevalent in C. S. Lewis’s day as it is today.

Poems

C.S. Lewis loved poetry and wished he could be remembered most for his poems. They grab us in different ways than stories or prose. Here are some poems featured in issues of our Knowing & Doing publication.

Torn between the right impulse to do good works and also recognizing that God does not require our efforts for His purposes to be accomplished, John Milton reflects on the ways in which we spend our lives on this earth.

Stuart McAlpine reflects in his poem about the ways in which Joseph taught us to view art in the context of Jesus being a masterpiece hung on the Cross for the world to see.

Death. An unsettling thing considering it was never intended, and is contrary to the eternity set in our hearts (Ecclesiastes 3:11). In this poem, John Donne rebukes death and declares that it will be no more.

Words are both too immense for us to carry, but necessary for us to tell of the goodness of Jesus. Words though are not the complete picture of who we are. In this poem, George Herbert juxtaposes our being with stained glass, which leaves a more lasting impression than words sometimes do.

Legalism can creep into our walk with Christ and take us in a direction apart from Him that we ought not to walk in. In this poem, Cowper reflects on how the love of God changes our posture from thinking of following Him as duty to choice.

The beauty of God is displayed throughout all creation. In this poem, Gerard M. Hopkins reflects on God's wonderous beauty.


Malcolm Guite

Malcolm Guite, Author, is a Life Fellow of Girton College, Cambridge, and writes the weekly Poet’s Corner column for the Church Times. He is the author of several books including Mariner: A voyage with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Love Remember: 40 poems of loss, lament and hope, and David’s Crown: Sounding the Psalms. Guite earned degrees from Cambridge and Durham universities. His research interests include the intersection of religion and the arts, and the examination of the works of J. R. R. Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, Owen Barfield, and British poets such as Samuel Taylor Coleridge. He was a Bye-Fellow and chaplain of Girton College, Cambridge and associate chaplain of St Edward King and Martyr in Cambridge.

 

COPYRIGHT: This publication is published by C.S. Lewis Institute; 8001 Braddock Road, Suite 301; Springfield, VA 22151. Portions of the publication may be reproduced for noncommercial, local church or ministry use without prior permission. Electronic copies of the PDF files may be duplicated and transmitted via e-mail for personal and church use. Articles may not be modified without prior written permission of the Institute. For questions, contact the Institute: 703.914.5602 or email us.

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