It has now been over a year since the whole world, and my life along with it, changed in response to the pandemic. Perhaps the biggest change for me is simply the realization that it is truly impossible to know what the next year—or even the next day or minute—will bring. I still make plans, of course, but as I do so, I always have a heightened awareness that all plans are provisional, that anything can change at any moment, that I might have to give up everything in an instant.
In a recent spiritual report, I confessed that I had given no thought at all about what intentional changes I wanted to make for Lent. Having given up so much for so long, the thought of giving up something else for Lent seemed ridiculous. Taking on some new spiritual discipline seemed equally absurd, if not impossible. Hadn’t this whole year been an extended spiritual discipline of looking for things to be grateful for while restraining my resentment at being unable to keep up with my comfortable routines? Hadn’t the whole winter, at least, been a long slog of staying indoors except for a chilly hour of outdoor exercise, of never sharing a meal with friends or hugging people I love, of fear that I might never see my distant children or grandson in person again?
Now, as the weather begins to warm, tender green leaves are appearing on the tips of tree branches, the yellow heads of daffodils are nodding in every garden I pass on my morning walks, I’ve gotten fully vaccinated, and I’m starting to have hope of something resembling normality, Jesus asks me to hate my life in this world in exchange for eternal life in the realm of God.* What? Hate my life, just I’m looking forward to enjoying it again? Jesus, what can you possibly mean by this?
But then, I remember the guy who has somehow made it alive through a long, cold winter of sleeping in the doorway of the church at the end of my block, and all the people like him who have no warm, comfortable homes in which to hide from the pandemic. I think of my friend whose spouse of many years succumbed to COVID last week, and all the people who, like her, have lost partners, children, siblings, and friends and now must carry on without them. I think of everyone who lives in the shadow of racism, of war, of abuse, or all the other terrors that humans inflict on one another, on top of everything else they have given up in what seems like an entire year of Lent.
And when I contemplate all that others give up daily, I give up, too. I give up my right to my comfortable life. I give up my resistance to change. I give up my desire to have everything my way. I’ll probably take it all back again in another minute, but in this moment, in this eternal now, I want to give up everything, and follow Jesus.
-Deborah Sokolove, Seekers Church
Questions:
- Where is Jesus calling you to go?
- What are you willing to take on?
- What are you willing to give up?
