Making Space for God

Beloved in Christ, 

Lent arrived with a blizzard that has now dispersed almost as quickly as it arrived. I woke up especially early this morning to get ready for a 7:30 am liturgy, and was just leaving the house when I got word of the decision to cancel. There I was, full of the adrenaline-fueled, frenetic energy that comes from trying to get out the door quickly, and suddenly I was forced to just stay put, and sit still. Now, after a few hours, the sun is peaking out, the wind is dying down, and it’s a new world compared to what things looked like this morning. 

In just a few hours, Minnesota’s weather has given us the perfect pattern of the journey from Lent through Easter. The frenetic, anxious energy with which we so often approach our lives is rooted in a deeply disordered faith. We, like our original parents in the Garden of Eden, so often live our lives as if we are like God, as if the world depends on our efforts rather than God’s power and love. Human sinfulness, injustice and oppression, and the badness that so often marks our relationship all grows from our desire to possess, control, and force our will upon the world and the people around us.

Ash Wednesday’s reminder of our mortality, and Lent’s call to repentance, is an invitation rightly order our faith. It’s a time to remember that God is God, and we are not. Just like a good Minnesota blizzard, Lent forces us to stop, and to stay put for just a while. We cannot know God’s mighty power to save if we aren’t regularly making space for God in our hearts, lives, relationships, and calendars. 

We can’t respond to God’s call in this season of government chaos, incoming injustice on all sides, uncertainty, and fear with more frenetic energy. We can’t live like it is up to us to save the world. Our actions will only be faithful if they are rooted deep in the soil of prayer. So as we travel these forty days waiting for God’s sun to emerge again, how can you heed Lenten’s blizzard call to sit still, to stay put, to dig deep into the soil of God’s power and love, so that together, we might bear the true and lasting Easter fruit of live, justice, peace, and everlasting joy?

Grace and Peace, 

The Right Rev. Craig Loya