As We Approach Lent



With each passing year, I realize I look forward to the Season of Lent more and more.  Perhaps in my adult life, I realize that I need it more and more.  That I need a time, an entire season of growing closer to God through letting go and working towards becoming what he wants.  A time of going into the desert.  The idea of committing yourself for forty days to a special practice or either deeper payer, fasting, good works, perhaps picking up more mass attendances during the week or popping in more for adoration, actually gives me hope and a renewed focused on what needs to be the center of my life.  What is so ironic is that we as a Church are examining and remembering Christs death and crucifixion in this season, yet are hopeful for the Resurrection that we know only comes when we die to ourselves for greater love of God and his divine plan.  I think that is why I am always hopeful when Lent comes around, because I feel as though anything is possible, including real transformation, if I only let go, carry the cross and are willing to even go through some sort of death.  As I begun to prepare myself for this year's Lenten Season, I came across this beautiful reflection.  I think I will read each day during Lent, I hope it speaks to you as well.

Catch me in my anxious scurrying, Lord, and hold me in this Lenten Season:

hold my feet to the fire of your grace

and make me attentive to my mortailty

that I may begin to die now

to those tihngs that keep me from living with you

and with my neighbors on this earth;

to grudges and indifference,

to certainties that smother possibilities

to my fascination with false securities,

to my arrogant insistence on how it has to be;

to my corrosive fear of dying someday

which eats away the wonder of living this day,

and the adventure of losing my life in order to find it in you.

Catch me in my mindless scurrying, Lord, and hold me in this Lenten season;

hold my spirit to the beacon of your grace and grant me light enough to walk boldly,

to feel passionately,

to love aggressively;

grant me peace enough to want more,

to work for more

and to submit to nothing less,

and to fear only you...only you!

Bequeath me not becalmed seas,

slack sails and premature benedictions,

but breathe into me a torment,

storm enough to make within myself

and from myself, something...

something new,

something saving,

something true,

a gladness of heart,

a pitch for a song in the storm,

a word of praise lived,

a gratitude shared,

a cross dared,

a joy received.

Adapted:  Ted Loder, Guerrillas of Grace:  Prayers for the Battle