LENT'S SURPRISING ORIENTATION

Last weekend we slogged through the city streets of Chicago while visiting our son and celebrating his life. It was a joy to see him but a chore to move through the city! My feet were frozen. Of course I had boots on, but not the trudging kind, I had the pretty tall black ones that look gorgeous when walking on a clear, warm, dry day! Maybe this is a key to "how we do Lent." Do we recognize that Lent is hard work, like moving through a frozen tundra that was once a sidewalk, yet it is also a joyful walk with our Creator towards the Easter feast to come? Perhaps Lent is about realizing the path we may be on was never the one intended for God's beloved, that there are things in our life and path (like snow!) that should be removed to make traveling a bit less burdensome.

Ever feel that you didn't want to enter the Lenten journey? It seems sacrilegious to say and yet, we drag our feet plodding through the mountains of demands on our soul, like a weary traveler who signs up for one more trek through the desert of Lent.

When we realize that our feet are meant to walk in God's ways and not the world's, our Lenten journey makes more sense. We can be enamored by the world and constantly find ourselves pulled by it. Our whole lives swing outward, as if on a rusty, worn out hinge: relating to the world, in the world and for worldly gain, prestige and power. Our souls are meant to be lifted up so that we find a new way of seeing the path ahead. Are long we longing for something higher? Or Someone other?

"Lift up your heads, O you gates;

 be lifted up, you ancient doors,

 that the King of glory may come in.

Who is this King of glory? 

The Lord, strong and mighty; 

the Lord, mighty in battle. 

Lift up your heads, O you gates; 

lift them up, you ancient doors, 

that the King of glory may come in. 

Who is He, this King of glory?

 The Lord Almighty- 

He is the King of glory." 

Psalm 24:7-10 

Could the Lenten fast, giving and prayer be a way to purposefully lift up our souls and allow the King of glory to enter, to woo us from the world we live in and bring us to His Kingdom? Our habits and what we indulge often keeps our souls frozen in worldly ways, not allowing the "gates of our soul" to be lifted up. We aren't entering heaven's gates this moment, but we could live as though Heaven's King has touched our hearts now with the fire of His love.

May the warmth of God's love and the power of His grace free us to follow Him this Lenten season.

Medicine from Sacred Scriptures:

"Come, let us walk in the light of the Lord." 

Isaiah 2:5