A Message from Gary N. McCluskey, pastor
How easily we accept things when all is well with us. How critically we evaluate the same when troubled. When life is well, life appears to make sense. And if it does not make sense we can, at least, live more easily with its confusion. When life is heavy, confusion seems our partner.
Here comes Lent. For some of us it comes just when we are feeling pretty good. Dang! A downer to burst our bubble. For others it comes as one more burden to place in our basket of life. Just what we (don’t) need!
Lent actually arrives not to bring us down nor to weigh more heavily upon already laden shoulders. It comes to bring focus. Good times and bad can turn us onto ourselves, albeit in different ways. Lent says “Lift your gaze”. When we lift that gaze we are called to look upon another: Jesus. We are called to look upward….to a cross. Lent arrives to teach us through this gaze. Its teaching is that all life needs grounding. When full of ourselves, life needs the grounding that reminds us there is more to life than us. When we are low, the grounding teaches us we cannot rise alone.
Once when working with a liturgical design artist, he pointed out that all crosses he carved were firmly planted. There were none hanging from ceilings or walls seemingly suspended in time and space. They were connected to earth and connected to life and to our world….to us. They were not the image of flying superhero but the image of one well-grounded. Perhaps that can be a good image for you and I this Lent. If life is well……wonderful! Now we are called to step outside of ourselves and our world to share some of that goodness with another. If we are sinking, we need to cast our line to something grounded. Lent above all reminds us it is not simply we as individuals who have fallen short. All of humanity has. Lent reminds us, Jesus did not die simply about me, but about all God’s children. We are in this life together. We are better together. Lent’s arrival unites us in our common humanity. It unites us in our uncommon God.