Given the current state of the world and the state of our nation, anxiety has become a constant companion for me as of late. I have gone through waves of oversaturation in the name of being informed, and then essentially plugging my ears and singing, “Na na na na na,” as if not hearing the crumbling of human decency and basic goodness meant that they weren’t actually crumbling around us.
This week on Ash Wednesday, we begin preparing ourselves to enter the wilderness—a season of wandering that ends at the cross.
My son Peter is in third grade. He is an avid reader, blazing through the Harry Potter books at breakneck speed and just finished the last one a few weeks ago. Sorry if this spoils anything for you—but almost all of the beloved characters die in the end. Reading the last two books after enjoying the relationships and adventures of the first five is kind of an emotional trainwreck. For the last few days of his reading, Peter would walk out of his bedroom with puffy eyes and just melt into a wordless embrace. I got used to saying (and trying not to do so with a laugh because of his dramatic flair), “Oh no, who died this time?”
Each of the deaths in the story is heartbreaking and beautiful because of the road that led to it and the depths of the small steps in the story that brought us there. Even though Peter was crushed over and over again, he loved the whole story. He is going back to read it all again, and I can tell you from my own experience that reading the story with knowledge of the end changes the story for you—but does not in any way diminish the value of the steps it took to arrive there.
I can tell you from my own experience that reading the story with knowledge of the end changes the story for you—but does not in any way diminish the value of the steps it took to arrive there.
On Ash Wednesday, we are preparing ourselves to enter the wilderness. As Christians, we know that this wilderness ends at the cross. And even more, we know that the cross is not the end of the story. It is so easy and so tempting to focus on the hope of the resurrection so avidly that we forget the pain of the cross—and it is all too easy to focus so intently on the cross that we forget the necessary steps through the wilderness.
We live in a world of immediate answers. I can Google a movie ending while watching it because I am too impatient to sit in the necessary disquiet of a tense moment because I am too impatient to know whether this character is actually dead—and I can dial that information up as a way of protecting myself emotionally. Likewise, I can justify binging newsfeeds as a way of protecting myself with awareness, and also justify burying my head in the sand as protecting myself from the discomfort of a crumbling world—rather than recognizing my ability to just mute it as living into my own privilege as a white man in America.
Lent is not about the cross. Lent is not about the resurrection. Lent is about the wilderness. Lent is about the forty days when Jesus (spoiler alert: he was God, the heavens had literally opened up and dropped a dove on him with an unmistakable voice announcing who he was) wandered in hunger and solitude through the wilderness. Lent is a slow roll toward a hard end, but it is about the roll itself, not the end.
It is like the Israelites who were pulled out of slavery but not dropped directly into a promised land. Rather, they were brought out to wander for forty years through the wilderness. The wilderness story in the Old Testament is a story of God providing in small but necessary ways—manna, quail, water, safety—and about God’s constant promise being ahead (pillar of cloud in the daytime, pillar of fire in the dark of night to guide and remind). Forty years means that many who had been enslaved died in the wilderness and never saw that God’s promise was more than bread for the day. Yet perhaps bread for the day should be enough of a promise for any of us.
Many who had been enslaved died in the wilderness and never saw that God’s promise was more than bread for the day. Yet perhaps bread for the day should be enough of a promise for any of us.
In Philippians Paul says it this way: “Don’t do anything for selfish purposes, but with humility think of others as better than yourselves. Instead of each person watching out for their own good, watch out for what is better for others. Adopt the attitude that was in Christ Jesus: Though he was in the form of God, he did not consider being equal with God something to exploit. But he emptied himself by taking the form of a slave and by becoming like human beings. When he found himself in the form of a human, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross” (Philippians 2:3-8, CEB, italics mine).
As we see the ever-mounting struggles of our world, as we find ourselves feeling stuck or abandoned in a wilderness, let us not give in to the temptation to fast-forward either to the cross or to the resurrection. As our world feels like it may crumble around us, let us remember the little mercies that are made new to us each day. Let us actually stay in the wilderness for a spell. Let us recognize the manna that God has provided for today and then breathe deep, because we still can, as we pray for tomorrow.
I have a book on my nightstand by Shannon K. Evans titled Feminist Prayers for My Daughter. It is a beautiful collection of simple yet complex prayers for the many experiences and stages a daughter can face in this world. I find it helpful in directing my prayers for a perspective that I am unable to fully empathize with. My teenage daughter finds it “cringe” (said with the slightest crease of a knowing smile in the corner of her eye) that I would even have a book like this. Nevertheless, in her book, Evans has written a prayer that she titled “for small activism” about how to pray for a daughter who is overwhelmed by the state of the world and the mounting wilderness around her. It closes with these lines that resonate deeply with my oft-overwhelmed heart:
Present before her actions she can take
in her town,
on her street,
in her home,
in the smallest spaces, the least sexy spaces, the spaces that don’t seem to matter much.
Stroke her hair and whisper in her ear,
Now then, my beloved, this is how you change the world.
Amen.
