Lent is over….
I have so many thoughts and feelings. It has been 40 days of growing, praying, learning, kneeling, fasting, and being pruned. Letting God, the loving vinedresser, cut away the things in my life that were choking out the new growth. Cutting away the sin and distractions that were keeping me from loving Him and others like I should. Cutting away the excesses in my life that had piled up and piled up to the point where I could hardly see around them.
“If was not you who chose me, but I who chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit that will remain, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name He may give you. This I command you: love one another.” John 15:16-17
We have the ability to love and serve and bear fruit because God first loved us. He loved us enough to send a perfect, unblemished lamb to be sacrificed in our place.
Good Friday is a day of remembering this sacrifice.
In the Catholic Church, we venerate the Cross on Good Friday. We come, with all our hurting and pain, and we kiss the Cross that gave us Life and freed us from sin. We remember and we honor. My heart longs for this way to express gratitude for something words will never be able to encompass. Salvation and Life. Words may fail me, but actions convey the burning in my heart. Walking up to the Cross with my brothers and sisters, I was overcome at the beauty of the Body of Christ. I saw children being carried by their parents, seniors being wheeled up by their children, and every age in between. Christ’s Bride knows no age, no race, no economic class, no distinction between abled and disabled. We are all the Body of Christ. We are all seeking together to follow and love God by serving one another.
I am infinitely grateful for my faith community. They have supported, encouraged, questioned, prayed for, counciled, and pulled me through my Lenten journey. I am a better person because of the people God has placed in my life.
I know my journey doesn’t end here. God still has so many things to teach me about simplifying and serving. My prayer now is for God to give me eyes to see people as He sees them. I have experienced a glimpse, this past 40 days, of His all-encompassing love for the world, and I want that same love to overflow from me.
Learning From Flowers 