Lent 2024

It wasn’t how I remembered it. The stream, one of my favorites, was a place I remembered with glistening water and rocks causing it to dance its way through life. I often closed my eyes wherever I happened to be and tried to picture the stream. It made me feel like I was sitting on its bank, looking, listening, and tasting the stream I loved.

But when I returned once, it was nothing like what I had imagined. The trees and weeds had grown all along its banks. Storms had caused trees, branches, and leaves to fall and clog the stream’s flow. Now there was little sound and the brackish pools were cloudy.

Sadness and disillusionment replaced the excitement I had been feeling while heading back to this favorite spot. “But the stream you remember, the stream you came to see, is still here,” I said to myself, so I began to pull the weeds and lift the branches. It took more work than I intended, but seeing the stream begin to move again kept me working. Soon, the familiar sound of water dancing around the rocks made me look for other branches and sticks to remove.

I’ve always had a thing for streams. The beauty never ceases to inspire me, the sound never gets old. They’re so full of life, I once explained to my mother, who smiled and nodded to let me know she understood. That day, I realized a stream, just like our lives, need attention. They, too, can be glistening and as lively as a spontaneous dance, but storms come, so do trees, branches, and all kinds of debris. If left unattended, things get caught on the rocks and the water’s flow slows to a crawl. Cloudy pools replace clear rapids and weeds shroud the stream from the world.

Thank God, there’s a season like Lent when we’re invited back to the stream to do the much needed work. It’s sometimes hard, disheartening work, but when the water begins to flow again and the sun reflects of the clearing water, it is well worth.

May we all return to the stream and do the work.

Wind and Waves

“Don’t let the choppy water scare you,” said the skipper, “it just means there’s wind.” I knew he was right, but still something within me wanted the wind without the waves. It was a dramatic day on the bay, one in which we got soaked and almost flipped, but it was also exhilarating.

This memory resurfaced recently after a particularly troublesome day. I found myself on the shore of a potential creative project and saw countless waves bobbing up and down and creating an occasional whitecap. When I focused on the waves, I recoiled, but when I remembered the waves were the result of wind I walked toward the boat.

In biblical times, people felt God made himself known through wind. The fancy word in Hebrew is ruach, which means mighty wind. They felt God came and surrounded us like a breeze, and after Pentecost the early church felt God came and blew through our lives like a Holy Spirit daily.

The problem is, with wind comes waves.

Just ask the artist that feels inspired to write a memoir, an alcoholic who feels led to put down the drink, a child who sets sail into a life independent of her overbearing parents, a woman who leaves her unhealthy marriage, or man who changes his safe career of 18 years. In each case, there’s a mighty wind promising a new destination, even if it lies beyond the horizon. As exciting as such a journey might seem from the shore, the wind that carries also creates waves. We will likely get soaked and almost flip. No wonder so few set sail.

If we focus on the waves, we’ll either stay on shore or search for harbors where the wind doesn’t blow. (Such harbors come in all shapes and sizes, and, if we’re honest, we know which ones we return to regularly) But if we celebrate the wind, because we know its source and its purpose, we can learn to open our sails and allow it to carry us across the water to the place God always wanted for us.

Following

The waves were big, but the current swift. As much as I wanted to reach and ride the waves like the others, it was too much for my 12-year-old legs. My cousin, however, was older and bigger. He ran through the water with ease and dipped his shoulder to carve his way through the waves. “Get behind me,” he said with an encouraging wave, the kind a younger child lives for, and I did. No longer did I struggle. He carved a path through the current and opened a passage through the waves. Soon I was out with the others waiting for a wave to ride.

I had forgotten this moment until this morning. In my set-apart time downstairs, I thought about the fact that today’s my sobriety date. Looking back, I remember how hard this journey was when I began, how the waves were mighty and current swift, but like the day on the Jersey shore years ago, there were others who had been in the water longer than I who invited me to walk behind them. They carved a path and opened passages for me that made it possible for me to make my way out to the waves.

The image also speaks to my life of faith. Like sobriety, living a life of faith is not easy (despite what some people say). It is the life I long for, but the world’s current and my own weak legs often cause me to struggle. Fortunately, I have been “surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses,” which is a fancy way to say I have been given strong men and women of faith, people who were (and are) strong enough to carve paths through the current and open the waves. Through the years, when they saw me struggling they invited me to get behind them. Because of them I was able to make it out with the others. For such people, I am forever grateful.