“He forgives all your sins, and heals all your infirmities. He redeems your life from the grave and crowns you with mercy and loving kindness.” Psalm 103: 3-4
We have entered Lent. This could be the perfect time for starting some house cleaning, some looking at our souls. How do we look for God to enter Lent in a meaningful way? How do we seek God, as the psalmist implores us to do?
In Psalm 103, we are told in verses 3 and 4: “He forgives all your sins, and heals all your infirmities. He redeems your life from the grave and crowns you with mercy and loving kindness.”
Although we’ve grown up with the impression that Lent is a time of vague sorrow, it also can be much more. It does speak of a mystery, of a time out of ordinary time. That time can be when we give up some worldly indifference and take on some serious thoughts about Jesus Christ. Maybe in the past, in other Lents, we’ve given something up, or we’ve fasted.
This might have been a kind of contest, who can take on the most hardship. It might even have been a contest with oneself, to make tougher sacrifices than last year’s. I look again to Mary Oliver’s poem “Praying” for her suggestions on the search for God.
Just
pay attention, then patch
a few words together and don’t try
to make them elaborate, this isn’t
a contest but the doorway
into thanks, and a silence in which
another voice may speak.
A doorway into thanks and a silence in which another voice may speak. We can search for God in the ordinary and in the everyday. If we are ready, as we look for God, God in return will seek us and find us. AMEN.
Submitted by Rev. Mary Donovan
Prayer God, may we find you whenever we look for you, in our everyday lives.