Streams of Mercy

Yesterday was the First Sunday in Lent, calling each of us to begin a journey, to venture into the wilderness of our own hearts and there to listen to the many voices calling to us from one direction or another. The key to what we hear is found in how faithfully we listen.

Of the many voices we hear, just which is the voice of God? Just what is God’s intention for you and for me in this season of life? Just what did God have in mind when we came into being? What is God’s plan for our lives, and are we in the center of that plan, or have we lost our way?

Lent is an appropriate time to rediscover our own stories and our own identities, and to deal with the temptations in our own lives that keep us from being all God created us to be. Lent is a time for each of us in our own way to re-think and to allow God to re-work everything, we know and are. God only knows what this Lenten journey will bring for each of us, but God promises to sit with us, to walk with us, even to carry us when life seems too hard and we don’t think we can go on; God promises never to leave us.

Let us take time to accept the gift that Lent can be in our lives. Let us take time to reconsider what is essential, what really matters. Let’s take time to search for God, who even now is searching for us.

Last Wednesday, we gathered for our Ash Wednesday service and received a mark of an ashen cross our foreheads- as a sign of our mortality and our hope, and we shared this prayer:

Lord God, giver of our every breath, as we begin our Lenten journey, send your Holy Spirit to blow the dust off whatever in or around us needs new life. Remind us of our limits so that we will once again experience your limitless power. May the ashes on our foreheads prompt us to live our lives in the shape of the cross so that even when the ashes have been washed away, others will see in us the face of Christ. Amen.

Writer Ann Lamotte tells a story of the little St. Andrews Presbyterian Church in California. Whenever a member is leaving on a journey, the church family gathers around them and prays this prayer: “Traveling mercies. Love the journey. God goes with you. Come home safe and sound.” May this be the prayer of our hearts for each other as we make this year’s Lenten journey.

Elizabeth