Lent

I guess even cancer treatment can become routine. Another round in the chemo lounge. Check. (Three to go, yay!) Procedure on the heart. Check. Appointment made with rheumatologist. Check. Appointment made with surgeon. Check. (Apparently he’s a plastic surgeon. Why in the world plastic? That sounds like I’m trying to recycle something, maybe my nose or chin or something, instead of retrieve some lost fingers.) Tickets bought to go to Mexico for a week of training Mexican missionaries and return in time for the next treatment. Check. Visit to Dr Blue and Brown. Check. ((I did the unthinkable this time. When he said both, “I’ve never seen such a thing before,” and “You’re asking me questions outside my area of expertise” (Canadian doctors actually say such things), I couldn’t restrain myself and burst out with, “Doc, you know all those movies where someone dies and someone else spends the entire movie trying to find out how it happened, because she just wants to know why? Well, I might not be able to find a solution to this condition, but at least I want to understand why!” He stared at me for a bit. Patients don’t usually analyze movies around him, I’m sure. Can you just imagine him going home to Mrs. Blue and Brown that night? “Dear, you’ll never guess what happened to me at the office today. This old lady actually started talking about movies!”)) (Double parentheses. Always wanted to do that.) Check. Check.

You know, even this can become routine, and I can let it define me, absorb me, weigh on me. In fact, I don’t really see any way to avoid this from happening.  It just does, and I can’t control it. I’m just not that tough.

Except that it’s Lent. In our parents’ era, evangelicals didn’t celebrate Lent. Too Catholic. In fact, evangelicals in Mexico don’t celebrate Lent. Many of them don’t even celebrate Easter Sunday itself because they think, somehow, Catholics invented it. But in our day, many evangelicals have found value in setting aside a time every year to reflect on the Passion of Christ and how it has revolutionized our lives. Some of them (like Former Hostess Mom) give 40 days of thanksgiving. Others (like Husband) fast from some preference like cake or coffee to remind themselves of Jesus’ sacrifice.

And when you look at Jesus, the way he lived, the way he died, the way he just couldn’t stay dead, things don’t stay the same. They don’t stay where you put them. They shift. And where before you looked up to see only a blank wall blocking your vision, now you see sky, light, eternity.

In George MacDonald’s The Princess and Curdie, Curdie is given the gift to feel a person’s soul by touching their hands. In a flash of insight, he knows whether the person is growing pure or beastly inside. Lent can bring this flash of insight, a sixth sensing of passion and glory. Somewhere in these 40 days, may the Lenten season be this flash to you.

Two thousand years ago, a man hung on a cross. At the hour of noon, the world went dark. The ground shook. The rocks split. The tombs opened. Nature itself put its hand over its face and screamed in horror. How could the universe know this was all birth pangs?

Let us live the suspense of these day. Peer through the darkness. Wait for that first morning light.