Lent is for Turning: Whose Turn is It?

It was a busy morning at the Tasty World Restaurant on I-26 across from the Asheville Airport.  My fellow cook was at the grill while I hustled a new batch of biscuits into and out of the oven.  Our saltiest waitress was at the window anxious to get her order completed.  It included eggs "over easy."

She said with some pepper on her salt, "Come on Raymond!  They won't turn themselves."

In Lent with all that we do:

• Adding penitential rites to the beginning of our Eucharistic worship
• Adding solemn prayers to the end
• Reading Stations of the cross
• Adding an SSJE book study
• Learning about the saints through Lent Madness
• Reading Luke-Acts thanks to Bishop Wimberly
• etc, etc.

 . . . you'd think we were trying to turn ourselves.

Let's not stop these efforts but let's not forget that some of the turning of Lent is God's turning of us.  That's not easy to remember.  We are the first to measure our own efforts toward a deeper prayer life or less consumption or just being intentional about gratitude; all of which are worthy Lenten disciplines.

And we forget that the reason for a deeper prayer life is so that God can be in on it with us and our deeper prayer life becomes pressured by a late meeting or a broken heat pump and we suddenly find ourselves surprised by how late it is and how tired we are.  

Or we forget that less consumption has a close correlation with being present to others, especially those we love and our new practice has us refusing invitations from our friends because the menu isn't going to work.

Or we forget that gratitude helps us to anticipate and more readily recognize more than just the benefits of our privilege or status.  

Yes our hopes to be joined fully to God compel these efforts, within the parish or from within our individual disciplines.  TBTG! the outcome is being provided to us before we even wake up in the morning, before we've said our first prayer, before we stepped on the scale, before we heard the good news, before the eggs are flipped.

Like Paul told the Philippians, "I am confident that the one who began a good work among you will bring it to completion by the day of Jesus Christ.  Philippians 1:6 NRSV