During the season of Lent, we are
asked to look at our relationship with God and to use the forty days of Lent as
a time to draw closer to God and Christ Jesus.
For many years, I found the Lenten season to be an abstract
thought. How could I use a time set
aside by the church to get closer to God?
Isn’t that really what our entire life is supposed to be about? So why take forty days each year to try and
accomplish that lifelong goal? It wasn’t
until the separation from my wife that I began to move from abstract to
concrete thoughts. It wasn’t until I walked
in to a Lenten series at a church that I realized how much I needed the Lenten
Season in my life. The congregation was studying
C.S. Lewis’ The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe as their theme for the Lenten
season. Before the series, I felt C.S.
Lewis was an author of children’s books.
Little did I know that he is also a modern day theologian writing in a manner
that allowed everyone to understand Jesus’ death and resurrection. If you have never read the book or watched
the movie through a theological lens, I implore you to this Lenten season. A powerful part of the story concerns death
and the grief it brings along with it.
(Spoiler alert) The death of Aslan brings great sorrow to Narnia. Yet his sacrificial death also gives hope to
all inhabitants of Narnia. It is in that
moment that I began to understand Lent.
In Lent, we are called to examine
our lives, to see how death can bring about new life not just for us but the
world around us. In the death and
resurrection of Jesus, all of creation is given new life. It is only through the dark and dreary
sadness of Good Friday that we are able to celebrate the Son-rise of Easter
Morning. So it is in our own lives as
well. It seems that no matter where we
turn we easily find the dark and dreary sadness of death and grief similar to
Good Friday. For those of us left
reeling from a death, filled with sadness and grief, it is hard to imagine that
Easter Sunday will ever arrive. C.S.
Lewis, in A Grief Observed, describes the time after the death of his beloved
wife. Unlike the inhabitants of Narnia
whose sorrow was lifted shortly after Aslan’s death, Lewis was unable to
understand the why in his grief. Discussing
God during both good and bad times, Lewis says this about the bad times. “But go to Him (God) when your need is
desperate, when all other help is vain, and what do you find? A door slammed in
your face, and a sound of bolting and double bolting on the inside. After that,
silence.” Even Lewis, a man of
great faith, could not see or hear God in his death and grief. I believe that many of us have similar
thoughts, Where is God when we need God the most? The reality is that all we are able to see
with our earthly eyes is the darkness.
Yet, for God, who sees and knows all things, there is the knowledge that
Easter Sunday, the day when death is destroyed forever, is coming. It is only by our faith that we are able to
believe and see that Easter Sunday is coming. On that day, even though the pain
of Good Friday is still fresh in our minds, we see a new future being written,
a future where death has been conquered, where the love of God for all of
creation breaks forth into this world and where we are able to let go of the
dreary sadness and welcome the bright new day.
It is only after walking through
darkness that we are able to see the light.
It is during the season of Lent that some of us walk through darkness in
order that on Easter Morning, we are able to see the great light of the risen
Christ shining new life into our broken grieving hearts. Only then might we be able to see that rather
than slamming the door on our face and being silent, God has been journeying
with us throughout the forty days of Lent, holding us close and loving us even
when we were not able to be loved. May
your Lenten journey be a Holy one in which you are continually being called
into God’s loving redemptive embrace.
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