This is the fourth in a series on thoughts on Lent.
Arctic winds swept over the mountains and settled in the valleys. The sun would disappear for days that turned in to weeks on end. Weeks turned in to months and for only brief moments the sun would tauntingly unhide itself before hiding again behind foreboding clouds which felt like lifetimes. Eons ago some of my ancestors walked those same valleys as they looked towards the sky and cursed the gods, plead with the unmoving deities to let the sun return, and allow the frozen ground to yield crops and bring back the game. One of their descendants walking by a bowling alley one day looked up to that dreary sky and challenged the paper deity that he had feared. He rebuked his once cherished hollow god’s very existence. In reality that boy was just hoping for Spring. He was hoping for a new birth and life to return not only to the ground but to his soul.
Tumnus, in Lewis classic Chronicles of Narnia, a fawn whispers to Luci that Spring never comes to Narnia. It is forever winter. There is a longing for joy in Tumnus life but the long winter lasting more than a hundred years had left the world in a depressed state. Later when Luci and the children meet the Beavers they are told of Aslan. Lewis says that for the children just hearing Aslan name is “like the first signs of spring, like good news.”
Half a decade would pass but the sun eventually rose and I began to see the grace of Spring. I have long battled with depression. For many years my soul tasted nothing but a long drawn out cup of bitterness and regret. Growing up in northern climate for me created a hardness from poor acclimation to a strange culture. Yet there was grace. I still remember vividly sitting in a Anglican Church during Good Friday service and looking at the old world style architecture. A Catholic nun walked in from the back of the building to the front reciting words from the Magnificat and the gospels. She fell so hard on the hardwood that her knee caps sounded as if they had been shattered. Her pain and anguish was that of Mary mourning the death of Christ. At the end of her words she arose and smiled. She knew that the winter of Christ death was nothing more than to prepare for the arrival of Spring.
Lent means Spring and this should be our joy. In the winter I lapse in to seasonal depression. In this third week of the 2010 Lent season as I feel so very down I reflect on the different parts of life experience from three decades of life during dreary Winter times. One of the great joys of Lent is that it is a affirmation that Spring is coming. It affirms Christ suffering as one of us. It foreshadows Christ sacrifice for us while it also foreshadows even in the cold winter shadows that Spring and Grace are coming. I love the grace of God’s Spring. Many long for this worlds Aslan to come. Rest assured Christ is on the move. This is why I love and practice Lent with more fervor every year.
“Why do you stand looking into heaven? This Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.” – Angels to the Apostles as recorded in Acts 1:11
Possibly related posts:
- Lent Temptation, Sacrifice, & Focus
- Ash Wednesday and Lent
- Creation of Lent as Pictorial & Memorial
- rays of hope
- Lent: Easter & Passover