“And the Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness.” – Mark 1:12
I was not ready for Lent this year. Actually, I don’t know if I am ever ready for Lent. It usually creeps up on me and I often struggle with the shift in liturgical seasons. I often struggle with the shift in the seasons of my own life and am resistant to change. I am a creature of habit who trudges across thresholds. Beloved children of God, I still feel like I am in transition after seven months of serving alongside you! Where has the time gone?
Yet, because I am a disciple of Jesus, I am learning (and relearning), how to embrace change. For we follow a God who modeled this for us and invites us to walk with him through dramatic change over the next forty days.
Lent is a threshold, an opportunity to try something new, and an invitation to transformation. Lent is the season leading up to the most glorious, positive change of them all—the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Although… we are not quite there… yet. First, we must cross the seemingly not-so-fun threshold of wandering with Jesus in the wilderness, of following Jesus throughout the region of Galilee and Judea, of pilgrimaging with Jesus to the triumphal entry in Jerusalem, the Passover feast in the upper room, and eventually all the way to the foot of the cross. A LOT of change is upon us. This immense change is happening in our personal lives, in our church life, in our nation, and across our globe.
If you are like me, some of this change is painful. Much of it probably feels uncomfortable and overwhelming. Perhaps it feels like the Holy Spirit is driving us out into a space we don’t want to occupy. Often it is easier to stay in the old than embrace the new. However, we must go through it. We cannot avoid it. Every day we are changing (whether we are aware of it or not).
What would it look like in your own life to embrace such change, however desired or unwanted? What would it look like to name that which is difficult, and take a moment to discern what God might be up to in the middle of it? How might we learn to cross such thresholds and identify them as liminal space, as an in between time with God where true transformation takes root? How might these wilderness
moments unknowingly change us in ways we cannot even begin to ask or imagine?
If you’re curious about exploring some of these questions with a larger group, I invite you to our Lenten Sunday Forum Series, Into the Wild. If you feel you need to explore these realities internally, I invite you to consider what Lenten spiritual discipline might create such space in your soul for listening to the Divine within you? Setting aside quiet time with God in the morning before the kids wake? Scheduling a forest bath, a hike once a week, or even more? Carving out a moment while you’re sipping your cup of coffee or tea, to read reflections from our St. David’s Lenten devotional? Maybe listening to a Lenten playlist intended to soothe the soul?
If you are struggling in this very moment with a dramatic soul shift, and you can’t figure out which way is up, I encourage you to breathe; just breathe—slowly, intentionally. For this moment is temporary. This too shall pass. Something beautiful and glorious is just over the horizon and we will breathe through it together.
Peace and Love,
The Rev. Sarah Dunn
Associate Rector
Painting by: Briton Riviere