A Meditation for Thursday after Ash Wednesday
Forty days! That seems like a very long time to reflect and repent. It’s not about giving up some material thing or some personal vice. It’s much more about giving up yourself, being willing to die to self and hoping that there really is a resurrection on the other side.
Lent is scary in a very real way because it is a journey we take alone, looking inside to see what is in our spirit, in our heart. We hope beyond hope that after the dry wilderness there will be living water. We hope beyond hope that after death, there will be resurrection.
Still, we stay on the journey, and if it means anything at all to us, we will have moments of fear, despair, shame, stubbornness, hopelessness, contrition, and finally exhilaration. We will not stop. We will not shrink back from the journey. We will not rest.
A.W. Tozer wrote, “We must never rest until everything inside us worships God.”
Artist of souls,
you sculpted a people for yourself
out of the rocks of wilderness and fasting.
Help us as we take up your invitation to prayer and simplicity,
that the discipline of these forty days
may sharpen our hunger for the feast of your holy friendship,
and whet our thirst for the living water you offer
through Jesus Christ. Amen.
– From the Revised Common Lectionary
God of the Sparrow 🌱 By Kathy Manis Findley 