It’s a month and a half to Easter. Ash Wednesday is tomorrow. I’ve never celebrated it. The holy-day marks the beginning of Lent. I never participated in Lent either. I think it is something about dying. Dying is something I’m not good at. I’m not good at grieving death. Maybe if I died, I would be.
A friend related a conversation with her cousin this week, where he said that it is harder to surrender things after you’ve lost them than before. You recognize that all is gift. Gifts don’t by right belong to us. And that God has the right to take them back. That maybe He gave them to us to be material for sacrifice. You die to what you thought were your rights, your expectations. And then, when loss comes, you are already dead to the clinging, dead to the owing. The loss is still real. And you can grieve it.
The Resurrection teaches us that before the hope of life-again comes death. Maybe if I learned to die, so I could learn to grieve, I would learn to hope. Maybe hope means nothing if it doesn’t embrace death to self.
To God be all glory,
Lisa of Longbourn
Lisse,
Beautiful reminder friend.
I’m thankful to be a reader of your good writing.
Praise be to Him who gave you the gift of words.
And, thanks be to God who endured the cross before the
resurrection.
Love and prayers.
Nicole
Nicole, you’re sweet. I don’t know if these words are very gifted. Sometimes I feel like it’s more important to get the ideas out there than to say them well (if I can’t do both).
“Therefore we also, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which so easily ensnares [us], and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of [our] faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.” ~ Hebrews 12:1-2
To God be all glory,
Lisa