Preparing for Sunday

This Sunday is the Fifth Sunday of Lent. The opening prayer is:
"Father, help us to be like Christ your Son, who loved the world and died for our salvation. Inspire us by his love, guide us by his example, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

The First Reading is from Jeremiah 31:31-34, the Second Reading is from Hebrews 5:7-9, and the Gospel is John 12: 20-33.

The Response for the Psalm is Create a clean heart in me, O God."

I am going to comment on the first reading from Jeremiah today as it was a passage I spent time with in my month of prayer last summer. "The days are coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. It will not be like the covenant I made with their fathers the day I took them by the hand to lead them forth from the land of Egypt; for they broke my covenant, and I had to show myself their master, says the Lord. But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord. I will place my law within them and write it upon their hearts; I will be their God, and they shall be my people... It ends with the Lord telling us that "I will forgive their evildoing and remember their sin no more.'

The Lord has done everything to call us back to Him. He gave us a new covenant that places his desire for us within us; it is written upon our hearts. He is our God and we belong to Him! And God is a forgiving God who loves us!