Lent – Year A – Matthew 4:1-11
All of us need wake-up calls and the opportunity to start over, which is some of what Lent offers to us. From Ash Wednesday’s sober reminder that we come from a common source, that in our very substance we are the same—no more than, or less than, good old everlasting dust—to Easter morning’s glory and grand surprise of resurrection, it is a heartfelt time of relinquishing and deepening into our humbled lowly selves and our little part in God’s big story.
It is an awesome mystery to ponder, yet who would actually choose it, to enter down into the muck of our own thoroughly human nature, all of our lack of power and control on full display, our uncertainties about our soul’s condition and whether or not resurrection is real right here and now? Let’s make a circle and discuss it, shall we?
But strange things do happen on the way to Ash Wednesday. For me this year it is pneumonia, complicated by other conditions, which now requires me, all of a sudden, to stop. Stop discussing Lent, stop talking about it, stop searching for its real meaning. Just stop. Get reacquainted with dust.
So I will lay down inward/outward and other activities for an unknown period of time. Remember that www.inwardoutward.org is the site where you will find previous postings if you want to read offerings from earlier Lenten seasons. Past lectionary reflections are under the tab called The Story.
May we each enter more deeply into our own relinquishment, ready for whatever God proposes, and may it be a restorative time for us all. With gratitude for all of you, faithful readers. – Kayla
