Waiting and Yearning in Lent
Read: Mark 9:2-8
In the season of Lent, we are invited read the stories in Scripture that are filled with a strange mixture of excitement and fear, success and failure, loyalty and betrayal, affirmation and denial, life and death. The popular healing and teaching Galilean ministry of Jesus took a dramatic turn following his mountaintop visit with Moses and Elijah. There God affirmed for the second time that Jesus was God’s beloved Son.
From that moment on, Jesus told his followers of his determination to go to Jerusalem where he would encounter death. (Luke 9:51). That was not what any of them wanted to hear. His followers were waiting and yearning for a popular crowning of a king. Matthew places Jesus’ intent to go to Jerusalem after the feeding of the 5,000, where waiting and yearning were expressed by the crowd’s determination to make him their king. (Matthew 16:21).
Our Lenten stories can be filled with the same sense of frustration … waiting and yearning … in the experiences of repentance, suffering, death, relinquishment, brokenness, alienation, abandonment, loneliness, isolation and conflict.
As we journey through this season of reflection and self-examination, perhaps these questions will guide us on our way:
Do I feel as though I am in a wilderness?
Am I facing temptation and need help to resist?
Do I see a weakness in myself and the need to change?
What do I need to allow to die in me in order to be closer to God?
With what am I struggling and in pain?
What do I need to confess in order to be rid of guilt?
Lenten waiting and yearning is the time of tension between dying and birth … it is about change: of heart, perspective, focus … sobering thoughts, but not morbid. We wait and yearn in Lent for the astonishing proclamation: Death is vanquished! Sin is overcome! God’s reign of justice and peace is ours! Tender and astonishing love embraces us!
With you on the journey,
Judy May
Read: Mark 9:2-8
In the season of Lent, we are invited read the stories in Scripture that are filled with a strange mixture of excitement and fear, success and failure, loyalty and betrayal, affirmation and denial, life and death. The popular healing and teaching Galilean ministry of Jesus took a dramatic turn following his mountaintop visit with Moses and Elijah. There God affirmed for the second time that Jesus was God’s beloved Son.
From that moment on, Jesus told his followers of his determination to go to Jerusalem where he would encounter death. (Luke 9:51). That was not what any of them wanted to hear. His followers were waiting and yearning for a popular crowning of a king. Matthew places Jesus’ intent to go to Jerusalem after the feeding of the 5,000, where waiting and yearning were expressed by the crowd’s determination to make him their king. (Matthew 16:21).
Our Lenten stories can be filled with the same sense of frustration … waiting and yearning … in the experiences of repentance, suffering, death, relinquishment, brokenness, alienation, abandonment, loneliness, isolation and conflict.
As we journey through this season of reflection and self-examination, perhaps these questions will guide us on our way:
Do I feel as though I am in a wilderness?
Am I facing temptation and need help to resist?
Do I see a weakness in myself and the need to change?
What do I need to allow to die in me in order to be closer to God?
With what am I struggling and in pain?
What do I need to confess in order to be rid of guilt?
Lenten waiting and yearning is the time of tension between dying and birth … it is about change: of heart, perspective, focus … sobering thoughts, but not morbid. We wait and yearn in Lent for the astonishing proclamation: Death is vanquished! Sin is overcome! God’s reign of justice and peace is ours! Tender and astonishing love embraces us!
With you on the journey,
Judy May
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