Dear Friends
Most of us have favourite holiday seasons. For some it’s Christmas, with the family get-togethers and presents. But each year at just about this time, it strikes me that very few of us would pick Lent, a season that seems to most of us as grim. Think about it: crossing off days on the calendar until Ash Wednesday; leaving work just a little early, saying “I’ve got to get my Lenten shopping done;” advertisements on billboards and television reading “only three more days ’till the day of Ashes;” or little kids going to bed, asking their parents, “How much longer ’till Lent is here?” It just doesn’t happen.
Even among those traditions which do honour the season, rarely is there the same kind of enthusiasm or expectancy which greets Advent. Notice we don’t sponsor Lenten Adventures for our kids; we don’t have an Adult Lenten Dinner and Party. We don’t pine to sing Lenten hymns ahead of time.
Or maybe it’s Lent’s themes that trouble us. Penitence, Sacrifice, Contemplation. These are the words of Lent but you know what? Each year, whatever our feelings approaching Lent may be, the same answer comes whispering back: we do. Just maybe we need Lent. Just maybe we need a time to focus, to get our mind off of our career, our social life, and a hundred other things to which we look for meaning and center ourselves in Meaning itself.
Just maybe we need a time – is forty days really enough? To help clear our heads of the distractions which any involved life in this world will necessarily bring and re-orient ourselves towards the Maker of all that was given for our pleasure and which we have let become merely distracting. Maybe we need the opportunity and perhaps deep down we crave the chance! – to clear our eyes of the glaze of indifference and apathy which comes from situation after situation where we feel nearly helpless so that we can fasten our eyes once more on the almost unbearable revelation of the God who loves God’s children enough to take the form of a man hanging on a tree.
Lent reminds us of whose we are. The “sacrifices,” the disciplines, these are not intended as good works offered by us to God; rather, they are God’s gifts to us to remind us who we are, God’s adopted daughters and sons, God’s treasure, so priceless that God was willing to go to any length – or, more appropriately, to any depth to tell us that we are loved, that we have value, that we have purpose. Yes we need Lent we need an absence of gifts so that we might acknowledge the Gift. We need a time to be quiet and still, a time to crane our necks and lift our heads, straining to hear again what was promised us at Baptism: “You are mine! I love you! I am with you!” We need Lent, finally, to remind us of who we are – God’s heirs and Christ’s co-heirs – so that, come Easter, we can rejoice and celebrate with all the joy, all the revelry, all the anticipation, of a true heir to the throne.
We have Lent, a gift of the church, the season during which God prepares us to behold God’s own great sacrifice for us, with the hope and prayer that, come Good Friday and Easter, we may be immersed once again into God’s mercy and perceive more fully God’s great love for us and all the world and in this way find the peace and hope and freedom that we so often lack. That journey friends beginning this week on Wednesday as we join each other at Observatory Methodist at 19:00 pm for the Ash Wednesday Service please join us. There will be a Lenten teaching program that we will be observing the information will follow. But we will have Communion every Friday morning @ 06h00 am @ SPMC.
Solomzi