Pilgrim Road Blog Photo

Pilgrim Road Blog Photo

Monday, March 9, 2015

Lent: Maybe Especially For Mondays

Lent is really a beautiful thing at the end of a Monday.

Because some Mondays you need a reminder of the ocean load of grace you need.  Some Mondays, you get off to a bad start, and there's a vaccuum in your soul needing the rush of something fresh and clean and beautiful to remind you that one day, there will be no more blue Mondays.

I had a talk with myself today, not totally out loud but under my breath. Still, my lips were moving as I made my way across one of those hallways of healing where I make a living and strive to make a life.  "Stop your lousy attitude"  I told my soul.  I thought of how C.S. Lewis said "Sometimes you have to tell your feelings where to get off."  One of the doctors laughed when she inquired about my apparent schizophrenia, and said she loved me, and I had to smile with the affectionate thought of how I love her too, despite the fact that everyone is getting under my skin today and I don't have enough time to get my work done and it feels like I'm at the DMV the way EVERYONE is complaining.

I myself being exhibit A.

I took a lunch break...at 2:30... about 2 hours after I really should have walked away from that pile of paper my desk hides under.

And out in that 40 degree air that felt like summer for crying out loud,  I thought about the person I am to God, under the pile of grumbling and fussing and worrying and wondering.  I got outside and the birds were tweeting and it was actually over 35 degrees for the first time in 100 years, and I remembered how beloved I am to my Jesus.  How he saw the mess that doesn't define me and the trials that wouldn't kill me because He made a way through a lonely garden and up a brutal hill onto an execution platform for my sake.  Death couldn't even hold that blessed God-man.  He burst out of the grave with the keys to death and hell and said "Let everyone who is thirsty COME!"  Oh baby, and I went running, dying of thirst, and no matter how many bad Mondays I have left on this earth there's good to be found. There's grace and mercy and love to be found! The well is always flowing with fresh water on the stalest of days....for whosoever will just get off their confounded high horse and take the free gift!

There outside in front of that mammoth health care complex at the near end of an endless winter, Jesus Christ shows up alive and well in my parched soul.  The kingdom of God cometh!  Here in this messy heart, here in the 21st century, here where hope rises up again and the stone rolls away again, here the gospel lives.

On a Monday, no less.

Grace is found in the most ordinary places, on the most ordinary days. Lent seems mostly about a Friday and a Sunday, but it was meant for all the other days as well.  Maybe even especially Mondays.

Your friend on the pilgrim road,

Loriann


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