Welcome to Breakpoint, a daily look in an ever-changing culture through the lens of unchanging

truth, with the Colson Center I'm John Stone Street.

Lent has set aside in the church calendar to help believers prepare through 40 days of

prayer and fasting to remember Holy Week and to celebrate Easter.

The season of anticipation begins with the Ash Wednesday Proclamation, remember you are

dust and to dust you will return, and a world desperate to avoid all reminders of mortality

nothing could sound stranger.

And even for Christians in fact, these words can often seem out of place after all aren't

Christians defined by resurrection, why should a people who follow a risen Christ dwell

on mortality and death?

Well, there's at least two reasons.

First, Christians can easily forget in this late modern age that were creatures and not

gods and that we will die.

Each of these facts are sober reminders of how we should approach life.

Second, though the death and resurrection of Christ is the central defining event in all

human history, Easter can and the business of modern life kind of sneak up on us, lints

away to prepare and to remember.

Like the sacred songs of the Adventies and Lenten hymns are wonderful tools for theological

instruction and worship.

For example, in an era when much of the church was committed to singing only the Metrical

Salter, Sir Isaac Watts believed that quote, the Psalms ought to be translated in such

a manner as we have reason to believe David would have composed them if he lived in our

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