By Philip Wales, Priest Vicar
Holy Lent may, in the minds of some, still be associated with a misleading impression that it’s a long spiritual drudge of self-imposed austerity and self-denial. Yet focusing on these aspects is to overlook its deeper significance. At its heart, it is a time of preparation for Easter. Through prayer, fasting and almsgiving we’re invited to make more room for God and contemplate what it means to live in Christ. Put another way, it is a time through which we become more aware of how God soaks through every aspect of our being in every season, not just this one.
Some years ago, before ordination, I worked as a member of a learning and development team. One morning, a throwaway comment during a busy working day snagged my attention. A colleague and I had met to discuss a new project. We talked through the large number of tasks they expected me to complete. At the end of the meeting they remarked that I wasn’t showing the anxiety that they themselves were feeling about what we each had to do. They had expected many more points of disagreement and tension about what needed to be done, by whom and when.
Thinking about this later, my mind turned to the contagious effect of worry. For a moment, unsettled by my colleague’s remark, I found myself wondering if, in fact, my response was somehow wrong. Ought I to have been more anxious? Certainly, that would have fitted their expectations about what they saw as a difficult time ahead.
Looking back, I wonder if that moment illustrated something about how quickly fear spreads, trying to take over the space which already belongs to God. In the Gospels, Jesus taught his disciples not to worry or to be afraid. Yet it was only later, after Jesus’ death, resurrection and the outpouring of God’s spirit that those first disciples began to feel the joy of living in Christ; a joy in which we can all share.
In his book ‘Into the Silent Land’, written on the practice of contemplation, Martin Laird writes of our being in God in this way:
We might liken the depths of the human to the sponge in the ocean. The sponge looks without and sees ocean; it looks within and sees ocean. The sponge is immersed in what at the same time flows through it. The sponge would not be a sponge were this not the case…the more we realise we are one with God the more we become ourselves, just as we were created to be. The Creator is outpouring love, the creation, the love outpoured. (p17)
That image has stayed with me because it reminds me of God’s all-surrounding love. The sponge does not have to do anything at all. It simply is. And perhaps that is what this season offers: not the anxious, fear-driven effort to be a better disciple, but the slower, gentler work of becoming more aware of what is already, and has always been, the case. As Easter people we discover again, during Lent, that God is not waiting to be found somewhere a long way off at the end of our striving, but He is already here, already within and around us, already present in more ways than we can possibly imagine.