Lent begins March 2. We have to ask why does this season have such a strong hold on our religious imagination and our spiritual practices?
In the midst of a very hard-working world (we work a lot harder than we think) we are being offered an opportunity to move out into the wilderness to be attentive to God.
The life of everyone needs seasons set aside for special purposes. When you lose a loved one you will need a time to grieve and share your sorrow over your loss. But the grieving season also is meant to be a means to recover yourself and your place in the world. We are meant to cry, wail and moan our loss; but not forever!
We are not inventing the wheel when we are given the forty days of Lent. There is great wisdom here from countless ancestors of our past who recognized the need to block some time to focus on their God. We go back to our ancestors in the Bible to recognize that people went out into the physical desert (and the desert of time) to be attentive to the movements of God. They were too busy and distracted in their city life to pay sufficient attention to God.
We know that Jesus moved into the wilderness to be attentive to God. He blocked off space to encounter the plan and the will of God for his life.
One of the first things that we need to do during this Lent (2022) is prayer. Maybe we have grown slack in our attentiveness to the Spirit of God. We want to structure into our day time to be very attentive to the Spirit of God.
This prayer need not take the form of many words. Rather it needs to be more a time to just sitting and being with the Spirit of God, living and present within us. It is a time of intensese listening. There is a beautiful example of the older gentleman who would always drop by the parish church on his way home from work (in the days when it was safe to have our church buildings open all day) and spend a few moments in quiet prayer.
Someone asked him, knowing that this man knows how to pray: How do you pray? The quiet workman simply said, “God’s here. I’m here. That’s good!” So simple and so powerful.
Do not embark on a prayer-project that you cannot fulfill. Even if it is only a few moments every day, give your focus to the movement of God’s Spirit in your life. Also, bring your concerns for your family, your parish church, your country and the world to the Lord. Share your pain and frustration with God in your prayer.
Many people will use the little book of daily meditations that is located at the back of the church building and pray over the daily Lenten Scriptural readings. It is not important how much area they cover. It is attentiveness to God is the energy here.
As we launch into Lent this year move into the wilderness (with no distractions) to simply be present to the Spirit of God. We are not here to ‘do’ anything. We are here in our daily prayer to simply ‘be’ with our God.
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