Meet a New Day in Lent

There’s beauty in the silence of a dawning day. Beauty on the rising of a freshly minted sun. Beauty in the simplicity of order on a Given Day—more so when it’s a Sunday morning, when the city is still awed by the nature of things.

A few souls are caught up in the picture of this beauty: the security man getting off the bus from his nightshift; the man walking his two dogs on the leash; the Zion Christian Church group in their white and green uniform gathered on the silent, slithering river; the spruce Zimbabwean lady hurrying for the mini bus, a reluctant toddler in tow; the supermarket staff rushing to work with something loud to say; the petrol attendant still yawning the night away as he rouses himself out of the hut; the police van turning towards the police station; the homeless man already conversing with himself and trying to convince the fading stars about the care of God for little swallows; even the straddling cyclists, arrogantly blocking the traffic.

This is the beauty of the accepted day. The voice of God rising up from the nature of things to draw our comprehension. In it you see the loving acceptance of God who is towards the nature that is becoming, calling it forth and renewing the face of the earth.

You feel awed and humbled by it all as you drive to church on another Lenten Sunday.

You listen to the priest. He asks you to accept all these things, to make your penance and keep your Lenten practices as symbols of your gratitude and praise for God, the incomprehensible ground of your existence.

You think of your friend who only yesterday told you that he is an atheist now because he does not believe this world could have been made by a rational person, let alone a loving God. Your silent answer was how you felt the opposite, how you too would be unable to believe in a God that can be comprehended by his creature—surely such a god would lack the divine attributes.

You think about how you accept your incomprehension of God in deep humility and self-surrendering love. And there you identify the difference between your attitudes: one haughty and demanding answers, the other lowly accepting revelation.

Like a psalmist you have always been confounded as to why God cares for man; your significance in the scale of things: What is man that you should be so mindful of? The son of man that …?

Lent is about your acceptance of what God has seen to be good, thus worth being redeemed at the price of blood. Of seeing the purpose of even evil in the supreme design of God. Of opening yourself to the probings of the Holy Spirit. You tell yourself: it is about opening yourself up to God—whatever in Christ’s name that means?

In seeing the beauty of the day that is given you to participate in creation. In offering unconditional readiness to be transformed by the Holy Spirit in Christ. To “put off the old man who is corrupted according to the desire of error, and be renewed in the spirit of your mind: and put on the new man, who according to God is created in justice and holiness of truth” (Eph 4:22-24). To accept God’s call to metanoia in total breach with the worldly values that sway by false conventional standards and a need to be “respectable”. In standing with Saul on the road to Damascus with a simple but deep question of total self-deliverance: “Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?” Or with Michelangelo: “Lord, take me away from myself, and make me pleasing to thee.”

True contrition comes with fear and trembling at the hands of the living God. It is in the anguish of Gethsemane; in the malleability of your soul in response to God’s signature in nature.

The awe that comes with a sense of deep gratitude for the Given Day for you to water the seed of your supernatural self.

Lent is the weeding season, the season of raking away that which keeps you from becoming what is created to be you in Christ. The season of feeding my lambs. The season of getting rid of the clutter blocking the Holy Spirit’s work in you.

It is the season of asking, in fear and trembling: Lord, what wilt thou have me do? And then contemplating the answer in action.

It is the season of being in humble awe for the Given Day.