So Can I
How many times have I walked this road with you? Each year the journey begins, and I am never quite ready for it. As winter recedes and the joys of Easter spring abound, I am both more familiar with the signs of the journey to Golgotha and the life the pours forth from the tomb and ever more estranged from the grace of the risen Christ. How can that be, Jesus? How can I both feel more at home in the path you lay before your children and yet more unnerved with each passing year? Yes, I feel the great hope of Easter, present in all signs of rebirth, renewal, and resurrection, the joy of Spring itself, but I also feel the pains of Lent, of the winter that never seems to end, of the struggles that deny full illustration from the musings of my head and heart. At the beginning of this Lenten journey, the outcome of the journey feels as if it hangs on a knife’s edge - life and death resting on a precarious summit.
How did you feel when you first carved this new path? Was it as strange to you? Did you know where it would lead? What heady brew of excitement and despair, joy and grief did you feel as you walked in the light of the Spirit? Did you struggle to trust in God?
As the path looms before me, I see signs of your struggle, and in them I find comfort as I walk after you, for if you struggled with such human questions, then so can I. In your humanity I find a fullness of space within which I can embrace my human inheritance and in your faithfulness a place that can hold all my doubt and faith.
In your wake, Jesus, I do follow; awaken me to the path that is before me, that I may experience it in the fullness of your Spirit. Amen
Ben MacRae