No place for haste

Saturday in the First Week of Lent

I would flee to a far-off place

  and make my lodging in the wilderness.

Psalm 55:8

With no morning rush for school or work or activities, the quiet of the house extends beyond its usual time frame. I relax more deeply into contemplation. My mind wanders far and wide over recent events and those long past. I feel like a bird, slowing soaring in solitary flight over a measureless territory.

I am grateful for this season that propels me into the discipline of the desert. Every time I make the Lenten passage, I discover again that the wilderness is vast. And varied. It contains the challenges of rough and unknown terrain. Shifting landscapes. Lament and self-examination.

It also holds the promise of refuge. Of perspective that comes from stepping away from the tumult of my daily life. Of encountering resources when I expected scarcity. 

This is not a place to hurry. It is a place for stillness. And breath. And honoring the holy.




Photo Credit: Anne E. Kitch

Cleansing

Friday in the First Week of Lent

Wash me through and through from my wickedness

and cleanse me from my sin.

Psalm 51:2

After walking by it three times, I finally pick up my fleece sweater and examine the stain again. It has been lying in a heap for more than a week, since Shrove Tuesday when an unnoticed piece of chocolate melted in its folds. I have been ignoring it because I have not had time to hand wash it and because I am afraid to find out it is ruined, that the stain cannot be removed.

There is no time like the present. I head to the laundry room and apply myself to removing the oily mess, then set the sweater to soak in the prescribed cleaning solution. I am relieved when this seems to do the trick; I think the stain is gone. As I rinse it out in order to throw it in the washing machine with the rest of a load, it occurs to me that this is a bit silly. It is already washed—why not just finish it by hand?

I usually find hand-washing a chore for which I have neither the time nor the patience. But as I scrub and rinse the sweater several times, I discover a soothing rhythm to it and a gentle attentiveness. And I imagine God, hand-washing me with similar care. 

I am overwhelmed then by a vision of God washing each of us by hand. Patiently. Lovingly. And in God’s hands, no one is ruined beyond repair, and there is no stain that cannot be removed.

Copyright: / 123RF Stock Photo

Heartful Pondering

Thursday in the First Week of Lent

Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart 

be acceptable in your sight, 

O Lord, my strength and my redeemer.

Psalm 19:14

“I’ll ponder that in my heart,” my friend Laura responds to my request. “At this time of day, the heart ponders better than the brain.”

She is so right. It has been a wild day and I am pretty sure my brain stopped functioning a while ago. No task has been completed from start to finish, but rather I have jumped from computer issue to conference call to scheduling glitch to pastoral conversation to half a dozen half-finished emails and loose ends are flying.

Papers and folders and post-it notes are scattered across my desk like crumpled fall leaves and my mind jumps from one need to another like a rubber bouncy ball. Which is how I ended up on the phone with Laura having remembered a situation I had intended to lay before her a week ago or more.

Thank God for the heart. Thank God for friends like Laura who remind me of the sacred invitation to lay all things before the One who holds us all.

I take a deep breath. I offer up a prayer of gratitude. I lean into the holy, finding strength.

Stranger

Wednesday in the First Week of Lent

Your statutes have been like songs to me

wherever I have lived as a stranger.

Psalm 119:54

I stand at the kitchen window looking out over the frozen yard. At first, all seems still, but then I sense movement out of the corner of my eye. A rabbit hesitantly emerges from under the hedge and makes its way into the open in short exploratory movements. Earlier this week, I had seen telltale footprints in the snow, but this is my first glimpse of his brown furry self. It is an odd juxtaposition, I think, that this wild creature inhabits my small urban backyard. He is out of place. An alien in a foreign land.

Then it occurs to me that perhaps I am the stranger, standing at the window. After all, he seems more at home in this winter landscape. And he knows more than I do about the change in the season.

I am a sojourner in the Lenten wilderness. While the journey may be familiar, the territory is alien each time. I have never been this way before. As I pray in the mornings, I reach for God’s word, looking for handholds to guide me along the way. Seeking footprints in the sand to follow. Keeping my eyes open for signs along the way.

So I cannot miss the sign here in my yard, a companion for my expedition. And as I watch, he is joined by a partner and the two of them leap playfully making me laugh. I did not know there were two. I had not expected such good company. They gambol out of sight, and my heart lifts with song. 

Image Copyright: / 123RF Stock Photo

Joy that defies

Tuesday in the First Week of Lent
The Feast of St. Matthias

Restore us, O God of hosts

show the light of your countenance, 

and we shall be saved.

Psalm 80:3

I am arrested by the boy’s appearance in the window. He has his face pressed up against the glass, as if he would push himself through just to prove he can defy the laws of physics. His eyes shine with playfulness, and his entire body radiates joy that cannot be contained.

“Look,” I say to my daughter who is walking beside me as we pass the childcare room at the sports facility. She sees the boy and laughs, and for a moment the three of us are caught up in a dance of delight.

His exuberance remains with me; I recall his expression later in the day and again my heart lifts.

His is the face of God, shining on me and the universe, daring me to defy those forces that would hold me back from fully encountering the mercy and welcome and restoration that God pours out with abundance. Immeasurable. Incomprehensible. Inexhaustible.




Image Copyright: / 123RF Stock Photo

The grace of disarray

Monday in the First Week of Lent

If we have forgotten the Name of our God,

or stretched out our hands to some strange god,

Will not God find it out?

for he knows the secrets of the heart. 

Psalm 44:20-21

The house is not neat. The dishwasher flooded over the weekend when some frozen pipes finally thawed and waits in disorderly repose to be tended by a repairperson.  The bed’s mended side rail gave way after two years and needs to be replaced. Piles of teenage stuff that will probably never be taken to their rooms or disposed of lurk around more than one corner. Paperwork that may eventually resolve into this year’s tax return currently conceals the desktop and several bills that need attention. And then there is the email.

I find it difficult to let these things be. I know I can make a god of neatness and order. I can not only berate myself for not getting it all done, but also set absurd standards for what should be accomplished. How hard can it be? Hard enough to bring me to my knees.

The false urgency of the disarray can distract me from the important and holy work of tending to relationships—with my husband, with each daughter, with God.

God knows this about me. And on a good day, I know it about myself. But still the enemy tempts me to forsake my God, and all that I know about love and forgiveness.

This is one reason I walk the wilderness way. To remember. And to be remembered.

The Discipline of Discomfort

Saturday after Ash Wednesday

Why are you so full of heaviness, O my soul?

   and why are you so disquieted within me?

Put your trust in God;

  for I will yet give thanks to him, 

who is the help of my countenance, and my God.

Psalm 42:6-7

I wake in the artificial darkness of the hotel room, the curtains keeping out even the hint of dawn. It could be three a.m. or nine, with no natural light to tell the time. Somewhat reluctantly, I come fully awake.

I set myself up to pray, and am discontent. I miss the comforts of home and of my prayer space. No comfy chair. No afghan. No cup of hot, hot tea. And I realize that I have come to enjoy a kind of familiar security when I settle in to draw near to the holy.  But this is part of the wilderness road, learning to pray when it is uncomfortable and unfamiliar, when it is ugly and uncertain. Learning to lift my voice in praise and thanksgiving when my back is a bit sore and I am missing my tea and the surroundings are disagreeable.

Sometimes I don’t get to settle into prayer. Sometimes I do not get to feel all cozy before I sink into meditative bliss. Sometimes worship and adoration and supplication are just plain hard to come by. But the discipline of the desert way is one of trust. To trust the preparation and the practice. To trust that God knows the way when I do not. To know that even when my attempts are feeble, God’s graciousness is full.

So I ask God to open my lips, and am thankful.