Day Four

Day Four // February 29 // Growing Fullness

“For fifteen years, I was a teacher of youth. They were years out of the fullness and bloom of my younger manhood. They were years mingled of half breathless work, of anxious self-questionings, of planning and replanning, of disillusion, or mounting wonder.” – W. E. B. DuBois –

Years ago, a British newspaper offered a prize for the best response to the question, “What is wrong with the world?” The winning letter was the shortest. This note simply said, “Dear Sir, I Am,” and it was signed G. K. Chesterton. Lent thrusts us into a season of deep self-reflection. It is a time to evaluate how we have squandered God’s opportunities and filled our lives with our own agendas rather than God’s.

Psalm 127:1 declares: “Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain. Unless the Lord guards the city, the guard keeps watch in vain.” The question is: Who builds the house of our lives? Whose values guard our communities? Unless we fill our lives

with the Lord’s values, we are wasting our time. Until we fully embrace the way of love, we labor in vain. We need to fill our lives with the principles of Jesus so that we might discover joy.

It was said of Ernest Hemingway that, each January, he gave away certain items that were valuable to him to prove that they did not possess him. If he could not give them away, he knew they held a crippling power over him. The Lenten examination begs that kind of hard honesty from us. What have we filled our lives with that keep us from Christ? It may be possessions. It may be attitudes. It may be arrogant self-reliance. We may have taken the beautiful gift of love and let it rot with apathy, hard-heartedness and emptiness.

But, in faith, there is always the possibility of a new beginning. The Lord provides the fresh fruit of love for us to feast upon. We can rebuild our lives and grow our communities into sanctuaries of love. Frederick Buechner once wrote, “If it seems pretty depressing to start the Lenten season asking important questions of our lives and of the values we are cultivating, just remember that while we start with the Biblical imagery of ashes and sackcloth, be also reminded that the joy of Easter and the Eternal can be found at the end of this challenging journey.”

WEEK TWO: Discord – The Rot of Peace –

“There are six things that the Lord hates, seven that are an abomination to him: haughty eyes, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked plans, feet that hurry to run to evil, a lying witness who testifies falsely, and one who sows discord in a family.” – Proverbs 6:16-19 –