Ash Wednesday

       I recall a grade school assembly that I attended years ago. The speaker at the lectern asked a simple mathematical question to the students to which a child raised his hand to answer, perhaps he even shouted the answer out. I felt for that child who proclaimed the the wrong answer out so proudly. Ouch. 

        Today is the beginning of Lent.  I place great importance on the Lenten season as an opportunity to grow as a person, to become more fully human and the creation God intends us to be, created us to be. By far, the holiest season of the year as the Church goes. By far, the most needed season for us as humans if we don't have our own good 'Lenten practices' all year long.

        I have a perhaps nasty habit of getting down with FaceBook and railing against those religious elite and fake Christians as I call them.  I see a great parallel in the world between the religious zealots and theocracies of the middle east and the religious right here in the United States that I so easily label as the American Taliban. I may very well be spot on and accurate. I may also be the Pharisee in today's Ash Wednesday passage from Luke. ( the Doctor ). How appropriate then that Lent begin a thorough examination of what ails me ( or each of us ).  Do I exalt myself in the denigration of others?  Knowing some of my own shortcomings and preparing to learn and address others I may not yet be aware of, I would be an easy mark for someone else to swoop down and proclaim my own numerous shortcomings. 

        That is not what Lent is about. It is about knowing how much we are loved, so much so that God sent Jesus as our Savior, fully human. It is all about becoming fully human ourselves and our personal journey to wholeness. Most assuredly, it is about respecting everyone else's journey as well, without judgment and full of brotherly love.

         I think we should never be so self assured and cocky that we "know" the answer to any question. The only answer we need to know is from that childhood song,

              Jesus loves me! This I know,

                 For the Bible tells me so;
              Little ones to Him belong;
                They are weak, but He is strong.

       Let God be our strength as we take the certainty of our beloved natures and transform that into loving action and growth on our own behalf. 

  

      

       

Luke 18:9-14

 He also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and regarded others with contempt: ‘Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax-collector. The Pharisee, standing by himself, was praying thus, “God, I thank you that I am not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax-collector. I fast twice a week; I give a tenth of all my income.” But the tax-collector, standing far off, would not even look up to heaven, but was beating his breast and saying, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!” I tell you, this man went down to his home justified rather than the other; for all who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted.’