It seemed too early in the morning for the sky to be so ominous and yet as I sat in my favorite chair watching the world awaken outside my window, I could not help but notice the warning in the air.  It appeared this first day of March would be roaring in as a lion.  Ready or not a storm was coming and I could not help but think this was a fitting start to the first day of Lent – a season for the soul that holds its own sense of foreboding.

I have had the blessed grace of living in the two worlds of the church – liturgical and not.  Each have beauty and good to give even if they find it difficult to give it to each other.   We, in all our righteous humanity, always seem to get in the way and make the sharing hard.  Having lived in both expressions of faith, I choose to hold tight to the truth from each but struggle not to consider one more holy. 

We always want something to be best, don’t we?  Yet, the problem resides in who is defining what is best – me, you or God.  I bet you can guess which two don’t belong.

Lent is a season that ushers everyone into the holiest day of the Christian calendar – Easter.  It is a season of ashes and fasting – physical reminders that our humanity is broken and wanting.  The wearing of ashes has long been a biblical sign of mourning, repentance and humility.   Lent simply reminds us it is never too late to wear your own ashes.  It is a burden to own what we have long tried to hide and yet in this somber season there is blessedness in the mourning. 

Many think the dark tone of this season is for the death of Christ but I would challenge the mourning is not for the coming cross of Good Friday but for our sin and culpability that nailed Christ on it.  The blessedness comes in the repentance and the forgiveness the cross gave. Yet no matter how freely it gives, a heart must be ready to accept and to change. 

As I watched through the window the sky turn dark and threatening, I could not help but feel a tumult rising within me.  Lent comes, much like a storm, whether we are ready or not.   In its murkiness we are challenged to linger a little longer in our own tempest, in our own mourning.  It seeks to uncover the dark within us and so we can change our direction.  Lent longs to make our hearts ready for the beauty that comes with Easter.

It doesn’t take long for the pounding rain and blowing wind of a storm to wash the dirt from the air and the earth – everything smells and looks cleaner afterwards.  It is a purification of sorts.  We, in our humanity, need a cleansing downpour. Lent can be the storm that purifies us.  We can watch it through the window but in doing so, we will remain dirty.  We have to enter in and stand in the downpour if we want a washing to come.

So here is the question.  How will you enter into Lent this year? Whether you are liturgical or not, it really doesn’t really matter.  The real concern is will you watch from the window or will you stand in the storm? 

Easter is coming – ready or not. 

I watched it.  I didn’t want to but I could not turn away.

She was 19 years old and her crime was saying she didn’t want to get married.  It doesn’t sound like a crime – at least not here.  Still and yet, this place what she called home had turned its proverbial back and closed the door.  Now the dust of the ground she had long since walked upon gave way to the hole into which she now stood – unable to move.

How do you get there?  In a hole and stuck.

How do you find yourself unwelcomed and alone in the place you call home?

Love doesn’t get you there.

Love would never leave you there.

Sadly, this story doesn’t end with her standing in a hole.  Soon, the circling mob of angry men began picking up rocks and with the aim of hatred threw one after another at her.   I wondered was her father in the crowd?  Her brother?  An uncle? I can’t comprehend the hate that throws the stone or leaves her in the hole. 

Or can I?

I have seen the videos on TV.   I’ve watched a man lying face down and motionless with blood slowly congealing cold on the ground.  I have seen the tears of those left behind and the fear of those who wear a similar skin.

And I ache.

I have seen the news reports of peaceful protests and frenzied riots.  I have listened to those pontificating from their media thrones and watched the spitting vitriol of those demanding retribution.  I have read post after post on Facebook and watched people climb onto the soapbox like a vote grasping politician using generalities as if it was true of the whole.

And I ache.

We are digging holes and the stones are flying.

It isn’t love that got us here.

But it is love that will build the bridge and get us out of here.

Look, I am not foolish enough to believe that sticking a flower in the gun and saying “give love a chance” will make this world better today.  I don’t have rose colored glasses on.

Sometimes the best love is the tough love.  It is the sit down face to face and talk love.  It is the shut up long enough to listen – really listen – kind of love. 

Love is good when it listens.

It didn’t dig the holes.  Hate did.

It is easy to dig the hole of confusion, misunderstanding and hurt.  It is easy to allow generational and cultural failures to cause the holes to get deeper and deeper.  Sinking us into an abyss of hate and friends, we must recognize the chasm isn’t always seen from the surface.  Its danger lurks beneath each of us and until we own what is ours we will never stop trying to toss someone deeper into theirs.

Love doesn’t throw rocks.  Hate does.

Our words hurl as deadly and sure as a stone itself.  Fueled by the hate they spit it becomes gasoline on a fire.  As fast as Facebook vitriol goes viral the flames of hate burn out of control.  Nothing is left in its ashes – good and bad are gone.    We beg for new growth but new growth will be slow in coming when the heart is scorched.

I don’t want to see more videos of 19 year olds in a hole.  I don’t want to hear more reports of men and women dying in my streets.  I don’t want people to be afraid because of the color of their skin or angry because the color of mine.  I don’t want to pretend it isn’t happening.  I don’t want you to assume I don’t care.  My heart aches for a difference and I don’t know where to begin except on my knees.

It is where I have been.

What I do know is love didn’t get us here but it is the bridge that will get us out because…

Love is good when it listens.

Love is best when it is lived.

Today marks an anniversary many of us wish was never on our calendars.  15 years and the strange thing is it feels as if not a day has passed.  And yet, so many have.

Moments fade into memories.  On most days, I can barely fight to remember what happened yesterday. Today, I wrestle with the realness of 15 years ago.  I hold it as much today as I did then but if truth were to be told it holds me even tighter.

I close my eyes and like a scene on a stage I see myself sitting on my bed.  It was a beautiful September morning blue skies, warm sun and a gentle breeze.  I was lucky enough not to be working at the hospital that day and was savoring every last minute of the morning that I could.  As I sat on the bed reading over a devotion, the shrill of the telephone jerked me away from my quiet.  My husband was on the other end telling me that a plane had crashed in to the World Trade Center, I grabbed the remote to turn on the television just as the second jet was striking the second tower.  When I told him what I just saw, he immediately ended the call.  There I sat dumbfounded by what was unfolding on the TV screen and not yet ready to let go of my quiet morning.

New York seemed so far away.

My natural response would have been to find myself lost in the news reports – traipsing from Fox to CNN to MSNBC.  This morning it didn’t even cross my mind and gratefully so.   I put the TV on mute and returned to my morning prayer time.  I lingered there longer than I normally would and for that I am grateful.

It would hold me tight in the hours to come.

I vividly remember the moment when my windows in my home began shaking.  We lived directly across from Reagan National Airport and often sonic booms would rattle our windows.  However, this time it was different and I noticed.  Minutes later, I would know why.

What visited New York came to DC.

The next time I looked up to the television I no longer saw pictures of a city hours away but a familiar shot of  a building just across the river with dark black smoke billowing from its side.  A place I had visited many times and the place where my husband was at that very moment.

Frantically, I looked for his business card and tried to desperately count off the rings and corridors to figure out where his office was in relation to the attack.  Truly, I had no idea what I was doing.  Geometry was always a puzzle and at this moment figuring out the Pentagon wasn’t going to happen.  Yet it felt like I was doing something.

The minutes ticked away silently.

The military community where we lived was locked down.   I couldn’t leave.  Phones lines were jammed.  I couldn’t call.  No one was outside – kids were in school, people were at work and those who were home were glued to the newscasts.

It was wickedly quiet.

Looking back, I am grateful for the time I lingered in my morning prayers because in the deafening silence, I felt a peace and calm.  I now recognize it as God’s presence and provision but then, it felt odd – different.  Words could not define it.

A couple hours passed before my husband could call and tell me he was “fine” – as fine as one can be when evil comes knocking at the door or crashing through the building. After his call, I guess you could say we both were – “fine.”

It was hours – like 16 or more – before he made it home wearied, wet and smelling of a strange mixture of jet fuel and smoke. He wore first degree burns on the outside and deeper, much deeper wounds on the inside.  Death and evil are not pleasant fragrances nor are they sights easily forgotten.  I don’t remember many words at that moment as we hugged in our living room.  To this day, we have trouble finding them when talking about September 11^th.   In that, I doubt we are alone.  As a first responder on that day, he didn’t evacuate but ran toward the horror.  He stood in swirling cesspool of hate when others were told to leave and for the next few months He walked that broken and burnt tomb daily.  Smells trigger memories.  I can still vividly remember the smell of his clothes each day.  I hope I never smell that again.

On that day we lost neighbors – a husband and a new father; a young boy going on a field trip – just two of the many who left their homes that morning without an inkling of what was to come.

On that day, evil demanded payment and the cost was priceless.

We will never understand why my husband’s meeting which was scheduled to occur at the exact moment and place where Flight 77 impacted the building was cancelled at the last minute.  We will never understand but we are grateful.  Nor can we comprehend why innocent people paid such a high price.

There is no rhyme or reason to evil that darkens a heart and empties a soul.

Still and yet, on September 11, 2001 our God – the One True God – remained the same.    This truth is what I seek to know and understand.  On Him I can rest my weary and heartbroken soul.  He catches every tear.  He calms every anxious thought.  He gives strength in the weakest of moments.  As real as His Presence was for me that morning, it is for me today.

He never changed and gratefully, He never will.

I read these words of John Paul Jackson today, “our wholeness depends on our closeness with the Creator.”  We will never, my friends, be whole until we allow the One who created us to define us.

As long as we seek to find our worth in the acceptance of people, things and statuses we will never find the fullness of the treasure we are to inherit.  We will forever be searching for the gold, silver and precious jewels of our destiny but settling for a few copper pennies instead.

Trinkets instead of treasures.

For we are all created to worship something and because of that innate desire we will find something to worship.  We fill our lives with baubles and noise.  Distractions will always steal the place of Truth.  We mistakenly place too much stock on what we know, who we know and what we can get.

Death is naked before God; Destruction lies uncovered.  He spreads out the northern skies over empty space; he suspends the earth over nothing.  He wraps up the waters in his clouds, yet the clouds do not burst under their weight.  He covers the face of the full moon, spreading his clouds over it.  He marks out the horizon on the face of the waters for a boundary between light and darkness.  The pillars of the heavens quake, aghast at his rebuke.  By his power, he churned up the sea; by his wisdom he cut Rahab to pieces.  By his breath the skies became fair; his hand pierced the gliding serpent.  And these are but the outer fringe of his works; how faint the whisper we hear of him!  Who then can understand the thunder of his power!  (Job 26:6-14)

I love to stand on the shore of the ocean.   As the waves crash along the coast, their rumbled power echoes through the million grains of sand and the lap of their reach causes me to sink deeper and deeper in.  This place, for me, is the outer fringe of the throne room.  In the distance where the earth falls into the horizon I believe He sits waiting, patiently.  Waiting for us to seek Him above all else.  Waiting for us to allow Him to call into existence the very truth of who He made us to be.

We live in the outer fringe of His work and look right past the beauty He has created.  He roars in the thunder and we hear only the faintest of whispers.

This may be all we get but truth be told, it is all we can take.

It is all we need.

Yet, we don’t seek the fringe and we don’t listen for the faint.

Do we fear it would never be enough?

We compete with each other rather than live to be the one He desires us to be.  We forgo our destiny for trinkets rather than laying hold of the treasure He has planned.

He has chosen our inheritance for us…(Psalm 47:4a)

It is good.  It is waiting.  It will always be more than enough.

The question we must ask ourselves is what are we choosing?