It’s a month and a half to Easter. Ash Wednesday is tomorrow. I’ve never celebrated it. The holy-day marks the beginning of Lent. I never participated in Lent either. I think it is something about dying. Dying is something I’m not good at. I’m not good at grieving death. Maybe if I died, I would be.
A friend related a conversation with her cousin this week, where he said that it is harder to surrender things after you’ve lost them than before. You recognize that all is gift. Gifts don’t by right belong to us. And that God has the right to take them back. That maybe He gave them to us to be material for sacrifice. You die to what you thought were your rights, your expectations. And then, when loss comes, you are already dead to the clinging, dead to the owing. The loss is still real. And you can grieve it.
The Resurrection teaches us that before the hope of life-again comes death. Maybe if I learned to die, so I could learn to grieve, I would learn to hope. Maybe hope means nothing if it doesn’t embrace death to self.
To God be all glory.
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