Fat Tuesday, Entering In..., Year B

Here on the brink of Ash Wednesday, I find myself holed up with a snow day -- a blissful gift because my greatest need right now is for thinking and processing and clarity. With each passing year, Lent shows up with different form and function in my personal and communal journey. This year, I am one year past a personal Sabbatical year - a mini Jubilee. Grace is abundant and alive and tangible and its work in my life is truly amazing.

Reading today from 2 Chronicles 7: 11 - 21 there is this direction:

When I shut up the heavens so that there is no rain, or command the locust to devour the land, or send pestilence among my people, ¹⁴if my people who are called by my name humble themselves, pray, seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land.

Now personally, I feel like my harvest has been rich, the abundance I have received, overwhelming. But then, I walk in a world that is hurting -- a society where personal comfort takes precedent over societal good, where people kill one another in some twisted allegiance to the loving God of creation or to mammon. 

Sackcloth and ashes...gnashing and weeping...dry bones that need breath and sinew.

And so today I am pondering how I might focus my Lenten discipline on a broken and hurting world - perhaps I can focus my prayer and attention on one broken situation that calls for humbling, prayer and turning.

We have strayed. We have forgotten. We forget. 

Make our paths straight, our intentions pure. 

God of power and might, heal us all. 

Heal the world.