Monday, February 11, 2013

Lent Begins and "Tomorrow" Ends

When a friend of mine was dying of complications from cancer treatments, he was given a new perspective on life which he generously shared with others. He said that our culture tells us, "Today is the first day of the rest of your life, and the best is yet to come." We are instructed that we may always expect a better tomorrow.

My friend's own learning as a devoted Christian during his extended illness was, rather, that one must learn to come to grips with loss day by day, and to detach from things one step at a time. He would say, "Today is the last day of the best of your life." At first blush, it seems dark, but the longer we live with what he had to say, the more we recognize it is simply truth, so far as worldliness and health are concerned. Soon or late, we must lose all and suffer the end of all we attached ourselves to holding.

We must die a little. If we are to die well, we must come entirely to the end of ourselves.

Lent is the season for practicing this loss and for rehearsing this insight so that it gains traction in us. We are not "immortals." We are at this level simply mortal creatures coming to our end, and on another, related level we are sin-injured souls who show the wounds of our own actions and the misdeeds of others.

The Gospel journey toward Jerusalem and the cross, a path we may walk every year with Jesus, is also a journey toward insight, loss, detachment -- and death. We confess this. We confess mortality and sin. We say we are ashes and dust, and in these we mourn and repent.

While it is ultimately true that "the best is yet to come," this has everything to do with God's loving initiative in Jesus Christ toward the suffering, regretting, mourning, dying. It has nothing to do with what future entertainments or fulfillments we may still dream about from our careers, our studies, or as the outcome of our fortunate circumstances. Neither is this best from God limited by the flaws, shortcomings, collapses or destructions of our early misfortunes.

God's best for us exceeds the day we live and ends in final blessing. It may be true for many of us that from this day forward, our "tomorrows" will  get no better, and we will die a little. However, it is also true that nothing which happens for good or for ill can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus.

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