We pretend to trust you and yet we are convinced of our own abilities and understanding even during difficult seasons. This last year has been a difficult season – it feels as if Lent 2020 was extended into this year’s Lenten season.
It is during Lent that you catch our attention and we recognize that you are calling out to us. We have learned to slow down; we have learned to grieve; we have learned that in fact “we are dust and to dust we shall return.” Yet while grieving, we didn’t seek out joy. And while discovering our fragile humanity, we forgot to look forward for hope.
Once again, in our sinfulness we believed that our knowledge and experience were enough – forgive us for our conceit. We ask you now for the courage to say that we don’t understand the mystery between grief and joy or frailty and hope. We ask you, Lord, for wisdom to seek these things in your truth so we do not stop at sorrow and frailty but allow them, instead, to move us closer to you.
In our mourning and meekness let us cry out Halleluiah! All praises to God because sorrow directs us to the cross where joy and hope await.
Amen
“But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even look up to heaven, but was beating his breast and saying ‘God be merciful to me, a sinner!’” Luke 18:13