PrayingWithMyFingers

Dear God,

What a beautiful day it has been!  And, it is so appropriate that Sunday is excluded as part of the Lenten fast and is celebrated as a “Feast” day.  The day has felt like a feast to me.  I slept in till almost 9am!  I hardly ever sleep past 7am and especially not since getting the puppies last October.

It was a lazy morning sipping coffee and then off to the 11:30am service at church.  The faithful were out in droves and it was hard to find a seat.  The service was “the usual” but the concluding song seemed most appropriate for my feeling of the day, “How can I Keep from Singing?” and, was reaffirmed when I walked out the church door into the bright, soft air of the day.  It was so wonderful to feel warm air after all the cold, cold weeks.  It felt like both a sign and a gift of new life for now and for the coming Easter.

Yes, it has been a feast day and a rest day.  Yet, because it is Lent, I am compelled to remember that tomorrow continues the goal and purpose of Lent – to continue turning inward in order to look inside myself and see what I am not, to continue the journey to Golgotha with Jesus, to have all that is dark and unlovely in me crucified so that I may be of service according to Your will.

“Lord Jesus, to be your disciple is to be without an insurance policy.  You ask me to abandon a life that lives for bread alone.  I sometimes doubt if there is any other.  The challenge of your gospel intimidates me.  Your courageous defiance of Satan, your fierce integrity, challenge my complacency.  You have drawn me into your Lent and are making me afraid.  Give me the courage to follow you.”