Christ is Risen! He is Risen indeed!
Blessed Easter, Beloveds. Please enjoy this beautiful traditional spiritual!
LENT IT BE
Maybe it’s because I have been working for a church for the past 5 years.
Or maybe it’s because every Lenten season, I am the editor-in-chief of an online Bible study that sets an intention for 40 Days to deepen our faith.
Maybe it’s because it’s at the tail end of the cold rainy season, testing my endurance with the dregs of dismal downpour.
Whatever it may be, the weeks leading up to Easter always seem to be…intense: more work, more things to which I need to show up, but most significantly, more spiritual testing, more trial - usually emotionally and energetically.
Of course, nothing beat the Lent season of 2020 when Covid confused the world, and lockdown prevented my church from even gathering for Easter Sunday. Talk about a forced journey inward - an obligatory fast! Government mandates or not, I usually take it upon myself to make Lent a bit of a sacred space. After all, it is a specified “season” in the liturgical tradition, outside of what is referred to as Ordinary Time; this period always ends up being extraordinary, whether I define for myself as such or not.
SACKCLOTH & ASHES, LOCUST & HONEY
Lent seems to go something like this:
Day 1-10: the time during which I get antsy about anything I chose to give up, realizing my dependence on such things. Usually grumpy.
Day 10-20: Something weird happens and I justify going back to the things I gave up to cope with weird thing. Usually anxious.
Then at the halfway point something shifts.
Day 20-30: I lament my frailty and lowliness as things continue to grow weirder. At this point, the phrase “spiritual attack” is murmured. This is the desert stage when you start to see things…I see a cross in the distance. I begin crawling to it. It is not a mirage. Suddenly I find myself getting back up and running to it. I call this the John the Baptist phase.
Day 30-35: I don’t sleep. I’m full-on crazy person voice in the wilderness crying. I am exuberant about my trials, perceiving the lessons, grace, and humor within. I'm giddy with the grace I experience in my wretchedness. There’s extended times of prayer, and an awakening from anything that seemed to take precedence over the Gospel, which I passionately want to share with everyone, blessing people at the grocery store.
Day 35-40. I’m still not sleeping. But I am filled with a supernatural energy that manages to keep my body running, my voice in tact (I sing extra and extended services during this time), and my spirit elevated to a bird’s eye view as I look down upon all the goodness, the ugliness, all tracking across the surface of the deep, merging into one road that leads to an empty tomb. And all of it causes me to tremble: is it a weep, or a laugh, or the rocking of a babe in arms...
VAIN REPETITION?
Each year I do it again. Perhaps it seems monotonous - a hollow ritual - like the New Year’s resolution that we need to make again every January 1st because at some point during a 365 day stretch, we let things slide (for good reasons of course…). It may be true that each Lent I start off in a similar state of stagnation, and that each year I attempt the same futile attempts to demonstrate willpower to myself (to God?), and that each year I end up crawling on my hands and knees, exhausted, humbled, and eventually revived.
But I can tell you this: it is not a circle; I do not end up in the same place I began. Rather, it is a spiral. It may appear as if I am right back at the start, but I’m actually a level above it. This is Sanctification. And I keep going because in fact there is no end. Jesus said “It is finished” - but not the story…rather he ended the end of the story. We are not spinning repeatedly each year like a mindless mantra on a wheel of fortune - an ouroboros eating its tail...
We are turning ever-upward on the Ladder, which Jacob perceived while in distress in the desert, wrestling with God.
IT BUILDS CHARACTER, KID
This year was remarkable. I realized that I cannot grow stronger in my faith, experience more of the Holy Spirit, or truly understand the love of God (and therefore be able to exude that love) without a heart transplant. for the past 34 days, I've been gently letting my old heart beat itself up and out until it finally just shuts up and down, and I surrender unto death so I can receive a new one. The main hurdle for me to overcome has been forgiveness, and just when I thought I was only dealing with old unforgiveness of the past, fresh fodder clobbered me in the midst of it all, hammering the point home in all directions.
I don't know if full transformation will happen by Day 40 (my son loves to critique how all movies end up getting out of the conflict at hand just in the nick of time, at the last possible moment), but it doesn't need to be completed by the end of the special season; Lent isn't a race or a contest. This is the kind of work that best takes place in Ordinary Time anyway, when the daily grind will cause apathy and futility without the racket of spiritual wrestling to keep us awake.
I know I am spiralling up, because even just a few years ago, such events that have occurred during this Lent might have spiralled me out of control. But I have been brought to tears by the amount of wisdom, peace, steadfastness, and strength He has given me, which I'd never know I had, if I hadn't gone through the fire to experience it. I could live inside of Romans 5:3-5:
Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.
I am in the Character part of that development. Bring it on and bring me up! I'll keep Lenting.
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