It’s about this time in the Lenten season that we get weary. We are tired of the reminders of that we are dust and to dust we will return. We are tired of the darkness. We are tired of confessions. It’s about this time in the Lenten journey that we want to skip ahead to Easter morning, to the promise of resurrection and new life.
If we skip ahead, we don’t follow the steps that Christ took. We don’t mirror his journey of turning his head towards Jerusalem.
As we sit in the uncomfortableness of the second half of the Lenten season, news of more deaths in Ukraine come in. It’s families now and older couples in cars and children who are remembered with empty strollers lined in courtyards. Everything within us wants to skip past this part. The darkness of death and violence, the reminder of what humans are capable of doing to each other.
And yet we must stay here. We must remain in this season.
We must remember the road that Christ traveled. We must be reminded that within us is the capacity to harm and hurt other people. We must sit in the darkness.
May God grant us the endurance and compassion to stay here just a little longer.