I don’t like Lent…I am not a wilderness person. I am a resurrection-type person. I don’t like the journey; I want to be at the destination. You can imagine the conundrum that puts me in during Lent. I want it to be Easter. I want to say “Alleluia!” I don’t want to remember the ways that we turn(ed) on Jesus. I don’t want to see that side of people, and I certainly don’t want to see that part of me.
I blame, of course, my parents. We used to travel to the most eastern point of North America every other year as a child. The almost three-thousand mile journey took six days. We travelled by van that dad had outfitted with a bench seat that opened to a fold out bed, a bunk bed that was suspended by cables between the windows, a stove that opened up and doubled as a backrest for one of us kids to sit “on the hump” between mom and dad up front, and a plywood box on the top of the van that had a mattress in it and was covered by a canvas tarp (like a tent) that the boys would sleep in. Mom, dad, my two brothers and I would travel from Duluth, Minnesota to St. John’s Newfoundland to see my mom’s family, that she left when she married my dad after WWII. Dad was an early riser, so we were on the road by 5:00am and travelled five hundred miles per day. We stopped for fuel (and bathroom break), and we stopped at a campground by 5:00pm every night to settle in. Mom prepared dinner, and before bed, she prepared food for us to eat in the car the following day. I remember passing wonderful sights driving through Canada and the northeast United States, but they were all a blur. We rarely stopped to enjoy anything along the way. Any “vacationing” that was done along the way was at the campground during those couple of hours between dinner and bedtime. Our purpose on this vacation was getting to the destination so that mom could visit her family. Although the vacation was one month long, the only part that was considered “vacation” was the two weeks in the middle. The traveling time was just a necessity, something we HAD to do to get to where we wanted to be.
Lent: The time in the middle that is a necessity to get to where I want to be. That is how I look at Lent. I cannot get to Easter without going through the muck. I cannot see the resurrected Christ until I acknowledge my role in His crucifixion. I cannot sing, “Alleluia!” before I say, “Crucify Him!”. I cannot fully appreciate the joy until I fully appreciate the pain.
Lent gives me hope. Hope that there is a brighter day, hope that the journey will only last “so long” until I get to the destination. Let assures me that if I am willing to take the journey with Christ that I will be rewarded with the risen Christ, and the knowledge of eternal life. Alleluia!
—The Rev. Cheryl Harder-Missinne
Trinity, Tulsa