Usually Easter sneaks up on me. Pastel bunnies in Longs announce it to me as I shop for baggies and dishwasher soap.
This year my older daughter asked me in January when Lent started. I didn't know. Then a writing friend mentioned off-handedly that after our next meeting she would attend an Ash Wednesday service as Stanford's Memorial Church. I decided I wanted to join her.
I'm so glad I did.
With stained-glass windows depicting the different stages of Christ's life, what a wonderful place to contemplate the culmination of it. Christ said, "This is what I came for," referring to his death.
The service had a lengthy reading for the congregation to participate in. Something from the church of my youth no long practiced in my Presbyterian church. I enjoyed doing that again.
The service was aimed to help us recognize what we need to repent of and be contemplating in the forty days leading up to Easter, both in sins of what we don't do, especially in regards to the poor or in terms of the oppression and injustice in the societal structures we are a part of) and attitudes we hold and acts we do.
Of what use is Good Friday and Christ's death on the cross if i don't know why I need it? Easter is pale and lifeless without a heartfelt sense of need. Far too often I've tried to cram all my spiritual preparation into one Good Friday or Maundie Thursday service. I'm hungering for much more now. For a longer time to prepare my heart to take in Christ's dying and his resurrection and what that all means.
That can happen if I start with Lent, with Ash Wednesday. I want to go annually to such a service from now on.
I - like all of us I believe - so easily think I'm doing rather well. The anxiety or gult I keenly feel at times is often more about social gaffooes, how I've made others irritated with me. That's far different than realizing my guilt before God.
Is that a bitter pill? No, I find it like dark chocolate, bitter-sweet. AS I realize how broken I am and how much I need God's grace, I run to him. And that is just where I want to be. In his arms.
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