Lent 3 | Lost in Lent
“I will seek out the lost, bring back the strays, bind up the wounded, and strengthen the weak…I will tend my sheep with justice.”
By the third week into this wilderness season, we who wander may feel that we have lost our way. Those intentions we made as Lent began have lost their force; Easter is a distant hope. The poet meets us in the desert, with these words of prayer:
Dear God,
why do I keep fighting you off?
One part of me wants you desperately,
another part of me unknowingly
pushes you back and runs away.What is there in me that
so contradicts my desire for you?
These transition days, these passage ways,
are calling me to let go of old securities,
to give myself over into your hands.Like Jesus who struggled with the pain
I, too, fight the “let it all be done.”
Loneliness, lostness, non-belonging,
all these hurts strike out at me,
leaving me pained with this present goodbye.I want to be more but I fight the growing.
I want to be new but I hang on to the old.
I want to live but I won’t face the dying.
I want to be whole but cannot bear
to gather up the pieces into one.Is it that I refuse to be out of control,
to let the tears take their humbling journey,
to allow my spirit to feel its [sorrow],
to stay with the insecurity of “no home”?Now is the time. You call to me,
begging me to let you have my life,
inviting me to taste the darkness
so I can be filled with the light,
allowing me to lose my direction
so that I will find my way home to you.— “Prayer for One Who Feels Lost” by Joyce Rupp