Yesterday Great Lent began. I love Lent because I feel like I am given a do-over every year. A time to refocus my mind, body, and soul back on Christ. Really focus on Him! I try to stay focused on Him daily throughout the year but let’s be honest, it isn’t easy with all that our world throws at us. All the shiny objects pulling us away from that one thing needful.
SQUIRREL!
I long to become more like Christ, a “healing presence”, a Kindler of Joy. May this lenten journey of 2022 get me one step closer to my creator.
Once again this year I will endeavor to read the book “Pilgrimage to Pascha: A Daily Devotional for Great Lent“. I bought it last year (and even have a post about it) and made it nearly all the way through. I begin again and I am sure to glean new insights and tools for my journey. In fact yesterday I read day 1 (which I know I did last year) and it seemed new to me. It touches on the purpose of Great Lent, the purpose for needing a “do-over” every year. Let me share with you:
When I’m stuck on how to resolve a problem, I stop ruminating and start from scratch. Usually, by getting a fresh look at a problem, I realize how to figure out a solution.
Pilgrimage to Pascha page 16
This same principle applies to my spiritual life. Each year during Great Lent the Church offers me time to return to a crucial starting point. I’m led back to the most important realities in life, since I do so poor a job of recalling them myself.
The scriptural reading for the first day of Great Lent takes me to the beginning of the Bible, the first verses of the book of Genesis. Here I read that God created everything by His power and out of His great love. God is the source of all life. Everything comes from Him, finds its life in Him, and returns to Him.
So how is it I have come to live my life as if I am the center of evetrhting, while I have shoved God away from His place of prominence and preeminence? Why do I prefer my own desires, thoughts, words, motives, and deeds above God’s? When and how did I become my own god?
When I search my heart honestly, I realize what I really want is to control my own world. I want God, but only when His presence is convenient for me.
The period of Great Lent is meant to help me rediscover my priorities, beginning with my main priority – God Himself. It reminds me that God is God, and I am not. He is the source of all, and I am not. I am His creation, and He breathes life into me. To remember my proper relationship with Him comprises the first step in my Lenten spiritual pilgrimage.
I love that last paragraph! I need to remember Who breathes life into me!
The devotional also points out a beautiful hymn we sang Sunday evening at the start of Great Lent. One of my favorites! (But I have lots of favorites!)
Blessed Lenten journey to you all!
Kindler of Joy! 