by Pastor Dan Baumgartner

Teach us to sit still
Even among these rocks
Our peace in His will - T.S. Eliot

Lent begins on Ash Wednesday, March 1. This special season on the church calendar runs for forty days plus six Sundays leading up to Easter. Lent. What does that conjure up for you? Somber prayers? Fasting from things you like? Dark nights and painful confessions? Yes. But let’s think further.

“If I could just slow down enough to have some time to think.”

“I’m giving myself to things I know aren’t good.”

“God seems a long way off.”

Maybe I’m quoting you here. Most all of us have said something like this at one point or another. We stress and fidget and vaguely sense there must be another way to live. We’re right, of course. It’s the Jesus way. Welcome to Lent.

“Teach us to care and not to care,” Eliot says. Lent encourages us to hone in on things that matter, and to let other things drift away like dry grass in a strong wind. It isn’t an easy time. Bethany friend and author Steven Purcell calls it a precarious “twofold reckoning.” Facing ourselves and facing Christ honestly is the way of Lent.

“Teach us to sit still…” Here is a concrete possibility for Lent. I’ve mentioned several times in sermons recently that it is getting harder and harder for us to sit still. For anything. What might this look like for you? A quiet prayer walk every day? Your home group taking 15 minutes of time each meeting to just be quiet, listening or reflecting on a short passage of scripture? No praying out loud, no leafing through the Bible, just sitting still to see if it might actually be true that God speaks to you.

“…Even among these rocks.” I talked recently with a friend who has a number of different stress-producing situations in his life. None are easily solved. What if he focused on any ways, big or small, that God even might be showing up in these situations? We tend to lay down at the base of the rocks and curl up waiting for one to shift and crush us. What if we sat and looked for the quiet presence of God in the midst of the boulders?

“Our peace in His will.” The most centering, affirming thing that happens for me in walking with Christ is to sometimes feel like I’m where I’m supposed to be. When that happens, all of the unresolved issues, all the boulders, all the fatigue don’t go away, but they do go pale. Where am I supposed to be?

Sitting at Jesus’ feet. Letting Him tell me who I am. Following Him down a road that winds through my neighborhood, my home, my community, my friendships, the people I meet.

Forty days, and six Sundays. At Bethany we’ll have simpler worship services (even fasting from announcements!), more listening and examining our lives. Small groups have a wonderful Lenten study series available. In sermons we’ll look at the gospel by focusing on The Hands of Jesus. We’ll pray.

Forty days plus six Sundays. If we do our work well, we’ll emerge from Lent into Easter light as different people. Welcome to Lent.