Waiting

Waiting for Lent. Waiting for something to happen in my heart. Wanting to love God with more conviction and strength.

The most remarkable act of love will be remembered this spring as it has been for two thousand twenty-two years.

Now is the time to wait. When it first happened, it was unexpected, though predicted. A special ops mission in a war that began before time even existed.

How do we prepare? We wait.

Don’t confuse waiting with idleness or indolence. Waiting requires patience, and patience is work.

Patience with ourselves. A time to reflect on why we needed to be rescued. Everyone who has ever suffered knows why the mission was necessary. We were not created to die, but death lives among us all the same.

For Easter to make sense, we need forty days to ponder what were are. That is hard to see after a two century narrative that tells us our existence is meaningless folly.

Waiting is tough. Ask any athlete, mother, child, or soldier. It can gnaw at you from the inside and wear you down. If you let it.

Here’s a better idea: Look at yourself with different eyes. Not as one created but as the creator. It is a completely different view.

We were created by love to love. It’s our nature.

We have forty days to ponder this love. If we do that, we will find the brilliant Easter morning we hoped for.