Lent 2020: Entangled Yarn

The young girl came up to her teacher with tears in her eyes. She held something behind her back, and when the teacher asked what was wrong the girl brought forth a tangled ball of yarn. Reluctantly, she placed it in her teacher’s waiting hand. 

Just minutes before, the girl had received the yarn as if it were a sacred gift, but in her excitement made it a wound-up mess. She went to another student for help, but they were only able to do so much. With nowhere else to go, she returned to the teacher for help. Sitting in the chair made for her students, the teacher placed the yarn on her knees and went to work. Strand by strand she worked like a surgeon until the yarn was as it had once been. Looking up, the tears remained on the little girl’s face, but now there was a smile as well. The teacher didn’t chastise the girl, nor prohibit her from ever playing with yarn. Instead, she held it out for the girl and said: “Let’s try this again.”

I’m afraid we’ve made the season of Lent too complicated, too churchy. With ash on our foreheads, and our fingers tightly gripping what’s left of our resolutions, it might be helpful to think of our lives as the yarn in the story. They were given to us as sacred gifts, and hopefully we received them with great excitement. Like yarn, however, we often get our lives entangled and, left to our own devises, probably make things worse if we don’t ask for help. 

Lent is a season to return to the teacher. It’s a time to place our entangled lives into the hands of the one who gave them to us in the first place. Mourn the mess, yes, but don’t despair. In the hands of the teacher the most stubborn knots can be undone. Obsessions can be lifted, habits transformed, and impossible situations resolved. Light can be found in darkness, dead relationships can be resurrected, and hope found within despair. 

But first, we have to see the knotted yarn for what it is. Then, we need to find the faith to go to the one who’s hand is out, waiting - the one who, in love, will whisper, “Let’s try this again.”