It's been quite the busy past several weeks. Friends showing up unexpectedly, more responsibility being added at work-- time is moving faster than I can track. I realized I passed my nine month mark at work last month without notice. December was the one-year mark from when my dreams were shattered as I was told I couldn't pursue IV staff. Did I really miss that? How did that come to pass so soon? Today, I sat down after dinner hoping to relax before heading out to volleyball when I saw the date and realized. Lent begins tomorrow. And I'm not ready. I'm not prepared. I don't have a reading plan to follow this liturgical season. I haven't picked a book to go through, a topic to journal, a new spiritual discipline to practice, or any of that. I have been taken utterly off-guard by this season and am ill prepared to observe it. This is unsurprising, really. Life does get busy, particularly after college. Responsibilities demand your time, and the consequences of not fulfilling them steepen. It's so, so very easy to let the ever-quickening clock sweep away your good intentions. Work, bills, chores; the small and ordinary dominate your time until you've forgotten to mark it. It's gone and you're left wondering how. In college, it felt impossible that so many big, important changes could happen in such a short time. Now, I wonder how so much time could have been consumed by the ordinary. It makes me think of Ecclesiastes 2: 24 A person can do nothing better than to eat and drink and find satisfaction in their own toil. This too, I see, is from the hand of God. The daily work of our lives has a natural tendency to pull us away from God, be it from stress choking the life out of us, or an over-infatuation with our work that strays us. Ordinary time consumes. To be able to find a God-centered, holy enjoyment of work is what I need.
I need it because I hold my Bible in the morning but by the time I sit at my desk I've already been swept away by daily toil. Of course I'm unprepared for lent. I'm unprepared daily. Observing liturgical seasons can be a way to reset your rhythm. Lent is a particularly good season for this, being one of abstinence and repentance. It's a season of re-orientation, placing yourself firmly as the receiver of Christ's sacrifice. As the sinner. As the needy. Some traditions, like Catholicism, have special liturgical seasons like Lent. When not observing a special event, the season is simply referred to as Ordinary Time. I think if I can re-orient myself in Lent, not only will my observation of Christ's death and resurrection be fuller, but so will be my observation of ordinary life. Rachel Fruit and Labor
0 Comments
|
Archives
November 2019
|