It's nearly spring! Can you feel it?
The birdsong has changed... The air has a soft undercurrent of warmth... The grass has begun to green up a bit... And flowers are journeying upward - through the formerly frozen soil - to, any day now, burst into magnificent bloom!
But the flowers in my garden didn't get there by chance. There was much preparation that led up to their day in the sun.
I tilled the soil...adding amendments when needed, and removing the rocks and weeds that would steal precious nutrients and space from their roots. Ordered and anticipated their arrival. Carefully planted and fed them, and then put them to bed under an insulating layer of mulch for the harsh winter.
Hoping against hope that the cold and draught would draw their roots deep and strong so that when the time was right, a tender stem would shoot up, up, up toward the warmth and light, and from the heaving dark earth would come a flower as beautiful and radiant as the sun.
In many ways, I feel like Lent is our emotional time underground. Drawing our roots deeper, stronger. Seeing the darkness that surrounds our hearts more clearly, tangibly... Feeling the hopelessness of the parched and heaving earth.
Longing for the light and warmth that is coming.
So often, much like our bodies respond to a cold glass of water in the oppressive heat of summer much differently than on a chilly winter's day, I feel like I don't appreciate the full effect of the indescribable beauty that is Easter without having spent some time in the bowels of the soul(earth). In that underground rest. That preparation that is the Lenten Season.
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