Ah...Lent.
No more chocolate...no more singing/saying/even thinking the word, "Alleluia"...put on your serious and somber face as a spiritual practice.
After all, today, on Ash Wednesday, we will take burnt palm branches from last year and put them on your forehead or the back of your hand, saying the words, "From dust you came, to dust you shall return." Thanks for that uplifting thought, Eeyore.
Yes, recently, good pastoral people like myself have tried to reclaim and reframe Lent for you. We have talked about rather than giving up...what if you took on a spiritual practice? Or what if you volunteered more time. Or what if you did something, anything, to connect with God? But honestly in a fast paced, frenzied world where we wear our busy schedules as a badge of honor, giving up chocolate sounds a whole lot easier!
To give up or take on...that is the question. What is the noble and needed way to connect with God in the coming forty days?
What if it wasn't a mathematical problem to be solved?
What if this wasn't some algebraic equation God is testing you with where you have to try to figure out where God is at right now in your life?
What if God shows up disguised as your life right now?
Yes, your life.
With it's pile of laundry.
With it's floors that need to be swept.
With that which is unresolved and unfinished and incomplete.
Eek! My life? My messy, mixed up, less-than-perfect life? God showing up here? Now? Um, just as second as I try to finished the dishes in the sink from last night and shove all that stuff I have been meaning to file away into the closet and put on something other than these sweat pants I am wearing.
God shows up in your life.
That was true in the very beginning...God walking in the garden with Adam and Eve. God interacting and intimately interwoven. After all God had sunk God's fingerprints into soil, earth, to make Adam (which is not a formal name but a word meaning, "earthling").
God shows up in your life.
That isn't always easy for me to discern where God is...I often only get traces of God's grace...usually it is in hindsight that I notice God.
But I do know that music moves my soul. Music speaks to my heart. Music provides meaning.
This Lent, we will listen/lean into several hymns. We are going to open our ears to the melody. We are going to ponder prayerfully and hold lightly the words. We are going to start with the hymn above, "God of grace and God of glory".
If you are familiar with the hymn, great. If not, that is okay.
I want you to listen to the melody in the video. I know it is extremely difficult when you know the words by heart to stop yourself from singing along. But try.
Does the melody lift your spirits?
What is happening in your soul?
What images from your own life come to mind? Is there an experience this might awaken within you that you had filed mentally away years ago?
Or better yet, get out some crayons and see which color you gravitate and grab when you hear this melody.
Or better yet, what prayer is evoked within you when you hear this particular combination of notes congregate together?
Listen...listen again. Let this hymn tune usher you both into the season of Lent and holding your life as the way God shows up, sings, speaks and sometimes goes silently by your side.
May there be more than a trace of grace in this practice for you today.
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