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Connections...
Blow the trumpet in Zion! Proclaim a fast, call an assembly.
Joel 2:12-18
Now is the acceptable time! Now is the day of salvation!
2 Cor. 5:20--6:2
"Your Father who sees what is hidden will repay you."
Matthew 6:1-6,16-18
Making Time
We are busy people. Our jobs, our families, our studies, our relationships are very demanding. Time is money: We expect every investment to payoff; we demand results. After all, there are futures to be built, careers to be advanced, fortunes to be created.
In the midst of the busiest time of our busy year, we hear the prophet Joel's "trumpet" announcing the beginning of another Lent. Who has time for Lent? We dismiss Lent as a pious anachronism, a vestige of a time long past, when farming was everyone's profession and Lent came just before the spring planting, not interfering with any real work.
But the hearts that beat within our weary bodies, the spirits that struggle with our overwhelmed lives yearn to respond to Joel's Ash Wednesday summons. The season of Lent calls us to stop, to look at the lives we are leading, to realize the chasms that often exist between what we believe and what we live, what we seek and the path we take.
To accept these ashes, then, demands a certain courage and resolve on our part -- they are a sign of our turning off the well-traveled but directionless road the world and culture herd us along in order to walk, instead, the lonely, hard road to the dwelling place of God. These ashes come at a price: They require that we empty ourselves of our own sense of importance in order to realize the full meaning of God's love in our lives.
But these ashes are also a sign of God's great promise to us -- the transformation of our fears and doubts into hope and joy, of our loneliness and despair into community and meaning.
Gracious God, be the light that illuminates our Lenten path over these next 40 days. Give us the courage to turn away from the harsh demands of our schedules and calendars so that we may realize the preciousness of time; give us the humility to lose ourselves in prayer, fasting and works of charity so that we may rediscover our identity as your sons and daughters.
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