11 Apr Ready to Emerge: Forgiven and Blessed
It is ten days until Easter. Ten days to complete our Lenten journey, to contemplate Jesus’ act of sacrificial love that will end on a cross next Friday. Whether it has felt like a long forty days to you, or whether the time seems to have flown by, in another ten days we will turn the liturgical calendar, so to speak, and our thoughts will turn to new life, renewal, and fresh beginnings. The cross always goes with us, shaping us and challenging us, but our call is to live as Resurrection people in a Good Friday world. And after forty days in the “wilderness” we call Lent, we are ready to emerge into the world as forgiven, beloved, blessed people of faith. At least, I hope we are ready.
In these final ten days I encourage you to reflect on how God is inviting you to take the lessons and insights of Lent into Eastertide. What gifts have you been given? What “a-ha’s” have occurred to you? In what new ways have you come to appreciate faith and God’s presence with you? Where is hope alive in you?
Rev. J. Barrie Shepherd has been a Lenten traveling companion of mine this season. I pray that his words will inspire you in these final days of this sacred season.
Lenten Peace,
Michelle
Chrism
by Rev. J. Barrie Shepherd, 1980
She took an alabaster box
of precious oil and spilled it for him
perfuming hair and feet
sharing a fleet, impulsive gift
of love right there right then,
no pride or low display
only the basic human need to give,
to see another’s face respond—
light up in joy.
We too have alabaster boxes
to be broken in the trust
that what we share will not be judged
in terms of vain conceit,
rejoiced in rather
in the open way of One
who poured the precious oil
of his own life to make
all other gifts complete.
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