IN THE ABSENCE OF ME, I meet You more. Small diminished pockets of my heart hold the glory of eternity in my forfeit – my giving, my dying and disappearing – when the heaps of spoil pulled close around my heart burn away in the heat of Your unturned love. We meet on hallowed ground You’ve equaled, not of my giving or sacrifice trite and incomplete. Even beyond a scandalous love, You bid me come to peace that I could never discover on my own.
Lent is just this – giving in response to God’s ultimate compassion. This season delivers an invitation to all who might come and die within their hearts to all things crowding thought and affections, all owned things honoring and satisfying only the heart. In simple words, lent is removing important stuff from our heart so that God’s love has more room to grow deep within us.
So it’s subtraction, but also addition.
What will you give up is but a whisper in comparison to, What will you add?
It is imperative to us both as parents that we teach our daughters the importance of why we do the things we do, not merely do these things because we do these things. Celebrate traditions laced in meaning and those celebrations give way to life development. Our daughters ask why and we tell them. This does two things: it informs our children about the meaning of what we do and it ensures that we know why it is we do what we do. Just as stories are lifeless until you read them with meaning having immersed yourself into the emotion of the words, not only the form of them, routine behavior is also meaningless until we subscribe to its meaning and embrace it in heart.
A question constantly asked within my heart is, ‘how can I show my children the way?’ The answer that echoes in return is profound – ‘go the way.’