The Journey

Welcome to the season of Lent! This traditionally forty-day reflection, renewal, and giving up or adding something to our lives makes us all stop and think about things. Whether you are thinking about yourself, your family, friends, or maybe it’s a job change, a move, a fresh start, or just life. It is always helpful to give something up or take up something new to remind us of Jesus and his forty days in the desert.

We discussed this with the children in Sunday School last Sunday. Most couldn’t decide what to give up and we encouraged them that they could instead add something helpful to them or someone else. As children, we may not think about this season of Lent as much. The age of self-reflection often comes later in middle or high school as we begin to think of what our future might look like. Where do we see ourselves? What will our journey look like?

Does this season of Lent resemble a journey? It is the remembrance of the journey of Jesus into the desert for forty days. What will that journey reveal in us? I am reminded of a Richard Rohr daily meditation that really spoke to me from a couple of weeks ago, in which Rev. Dr. Ruth Patterson “characterizes our life’s journey as a return to a knowledge of God’s love and acceptance.” She speaks of a journey where “we come from God and are returning to God,” much like the Lenten passage of coming from dust and returning to dust. We are whole as we begin, created by God, and often from life experiences, we become cracked. It is only in experiencing both do we return to God “to discover again what we once “knew” but have “forgotten.”” These cracks happen to all of us sometimes altering our thoughts and actions, but we never realize the impact they will have on us. The glory of the journey is feeling the cracks and yet returning to God to make us feel whole again or rather Rev. Dr. Ruth Patterson says it better, “They begin to see that the cracks are gift. The wounds of the journey allow the light to shine through.” No matter what the journey, God’s light will always shine through reminding us from where we came and that his love can always make us whole again. Where will the journey of Lent take you?