Preparation

For those of us who aren't clued in by all the talk of Mardi Gras in New Orleans, here's an announcement -- Lent begins on Wednesday. From this Wednesday (March 1st), until Easter Sunday (April 16th) Christians around the world will be participating in a symbolic cleansing to commemorate the forty days Christ spent in the wilderness in preparation for his ministry (Matthew 4:1-11; Mark 1:12-13; Luke 4:1-13). [And for those of you who don't know, Sundays are exempted from Lent because Sundays are our celebration of the resurrection and our Sabbath, and our focus should be on God those days, not on ourselves].

Most of us give something up for Lent -- I've given up caffeine, chocolate; other people I know give up alcohol or soda. Other people take things on -- a friend I have volunteers in homeless shelters through Lent, another friend takes on a specific time each day to read the Bible. The point is that we have forty days to prepare ourselves as Christ prepared himself for ministry. We honor the sacrifice God and Christ made by fulfilling their call for us to live in service to one another. And now, on the calendar, we have forty days marked off where Christians across the world are all doing this together. I don't know about you, but I think that's a pretty powerful thing.

I was reading from 1 John this morning, and I wanted to share the passage with you. The author (who people think is probably not John the disciple, but one of his followers) entreats the recipient of his letter:

We know love by this, that he laid down his life for us — and we ought to lay down our lives for one another. How does God's love abide in anyone who has the world's goods and sees a brother or sister in need and yet refuses help? Little children, let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action. And by this we will know that we are from the truth and will reassure our hearts before him whenever our hearts condemn us; for God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything. -- 1 John 3:16-20

Jesus healed and taught as part of his ministry, but really, he served the Israelites (and us today) through his death and resurrection. That is his gift to us. We can't do the whole raising from the dead thing, but we can live our lives in service in service to our brothers and sisters. We can heal those who suffer, we can teach about the overwhelming power of Love, we can hold the powerful to account for their treatment of the weak.

And we have forty days to get ready. Verse 18 states, "let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action." What can we do for the next seven weeks to prepare our hearts to love in truth and action? What do we need to learn? What must we re-prioritize? How does our schedule need to change? How does our thinking about others need to change? Who can we turn to to build ourselves up for this?

God calls us to service. It's time to get ready.

Love,

Becky

Our Roots

So it dumped a bunch of snow here last night, and one of the big maple trees in front of my building fell. I heard it about 6:30 this morning -- a big 'crack' followed by a really loud crash. I rolled over, looked out my window, and this poor thing was laying there right up against our building.

Just to give you a sense of how large this tree is, it grew about ten feet in front of the building, and as it lays on the ground, it stretches the entire length of the building. I'm not great with distance, but I'd bet it's about 100 feet tall. Just a huge maple tree that must have been living in that spot 75 years.

It's funny, because the guy I'm see is a landscape architect, and he was telling me just last night about how to plant trees in urban spaces to protect their roots. Buildings -- not just their foundations, but their physical presence and how they change water and nutrient flow into the soil, how they compete with trees for space and sun, etc. -- hinder trees' development. They won't grow as large or as be as healthy as if they were growing with only other trees. They hit a certain size/maturity, then they hit a period of inevitable decline. They become more prone to disease, have a harder time fighting off bugs and rot, and generally just begin to die.

Sure enough, when he took a look at the tree that fell, the roots were entirely rotten -- only a little living wood was present. It made me wonder about the ways we're vulnerable to the slow decay that comes from our soul's being crowded out by all the trappings we surround ourselves with. I love my apartment (sure beats living outside!), and I'd go so far to say that shelter is an essential part of my life. But my apartment building's not an essential part of that maple's life -- it got in the way of its growth.

Like my 'need' for validation. So long as I rely on that fertilizer instead of naturally healthy soil, I'll only grow so big. What's more, I'll leave myself increasingly vulnerable to rot from the inside. . . .

Or my addiction to business. As long as I run from one meeting to another and pack my day full of activities, I don't soak up life as it comes -- I gorge myself on parts of it and choke off others.

My poor tree is headed to the chipper tomorrow, and I'm glad that it will likely have a helpful future back in the ground. But I sure did like looking at it every day, and knowing that it was helping to keep the air a little cleaner. And I hate knowing that it could have lived a lot longer and grown even bigger if it hadn't been crowded out. Hopefuly we can honor my tree by learning from it -- what crowds you out? What keeps your roots from spreading as far as they need to go to give you a solid foundation? What gets in the way of your soaking up the nutrients you need to truly live? What's left you stuck in the shade? If we can identify these things, we can begin to change them. The maple might have lacked the ability to alter its environment to protect itself, but we don't. So before we find ourselves roots up when a little snow falls, let's get rid of some of the stuff getting in our way.

Love,

Becky