Lent 4

Lent: Living in the Wilderness
The season of Lent has a lot to do with wilderness. Designed to imitate the 40 days Jesus spent in the wilderness, Lent includes the 40 days (minus Sundays) between Ash Wednesday and Easter. In this season we are invited to enter instead of avoid wilderness. We are encouraged to embrace discomfort, instead of letting it be a deterrent...trusting that there is life there.

Scripture Reading: Hosea 2:14-20
In the passage of scripture we see the wilderness depicted as a place of beauty rather than a desolate place. This text also describes how God feels about us.
What characteristics would you use to describe who God is according to this text?

Practice:
We invite you to embrace the wilderness experience during this Lenten season.
This week, we suggest choosing the spiritual practice of noticing.

Here’s a link to a guide that will help you put noticing into practice this week: Walking Prayer – a Nature Walk with God

Stories from the Wilderness
Each week this blog page includes a story, written by one of our elders, in which they reflect on a wilderness experience in their life.
The story this week is written by Lesa Painter.

I am an orphan.

After my dad died several years ago, my mother was healthy and self-sufficient for a time.  She lived in my childhood home in Virginia, raised a garden, cared for neighbors, was active in her church and kept pretty good tabs on her 5 remaining children and many grands.  We consulted many times on the best tomato, how to sew tricky garment constructions, and the family recipe for sweet pickles.  She was the repository of a lot of knowledge that I didn't know I needed until it was too late.

Mom had Parkinson's disease and then suffered several strokes that left her both immobile and unable to chat in person, much less on the phone with me, the far-flung daughter.  When she was no longer able to speak, it was to me as if she was already dead.  When we  visited her in the nursing home, each time we simply wished she could just go home to Jesus and be healed.  Eventually, of course, it was her time and she slipped into heaven.  I thought I was glad.  I was, but unprepared how much I would miss my little mama!

The sight of her handwriting on garden seeds she had saved and mailed to me was both painful and comforting in that I had a piece of her that showed little of the effect of the Parkinson's that took her coordination and cognition a bit at time.  Her button collection held the same pain + joy.  Still, the evidence of my mother that I am sure that was direct from God was yet to come.

As I sat at the table of women friends at Unwrap the Gift listening to the Christmas carols so beautifully offered in worship, I saw her.  And my heart broke with tears as yet unshed.  What I saw when I looked at one of the ladies at the nearest table was the image of mom, just like in church when she would mouth the words along with the music.  Shirley Erickson does not usually look anything like mama, but she did at that moment, and it touched me to the core with the assurance that I might be an orphan in this wilderness, but my sweet mom is singing and waiting for me to join her!

Thank you, Jesus, that you meet us in our desolation with comfort that is tailor-made.