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Curiosity in Lent

 


Lent starts on Wednesday and I've decided this year to cultivate  curiosity. I'm not sure where this will lead me but it came off the back of a school assembly I led yesterday for 200 17 year olds.  I was referencing Jesus' famous saying 'you will know the truth and the truth will set you free'. (John 8:32). Amidst all the revising for exams and the importance of learning facts and answers I was hoping to inspire them with the sense of wonder they had as children and the curiosity that led them to ask questions.   Good questions sometimes are even more important than good answers.

After a day today walking with Ina in the Trossachs and hanging out in our van afterwards reading and chatting and snoozing  I  felt the challenge of my own words the previous morning.    Lent is so often seen as a period of contraction, a narrowing of appetites, restricting of habits, scrutiny of motivations etc.  It is hard to get excited about Lent the way we may feel during Advent with its lead up to Christmas...an Advent Calendar makes sense, a Lenten Calendar less so ...there would certainly not be any chocolate in it!

How may a healthy curiosity inform and inspire my Lenten journey this year?  There is a very appropriate place for the inner spring cleaning that comes round at this time, the awareness that we may have let things slide in our lives and need to get right with God and one another.   Having a genuine curiosity about this though can really change the mood music.  If we start with the assumption that God knows all about us anyway and deeply loves and cares for us then couldn't Lent be  a time when we earnestly pursue God's good intentions and purposes for our lives, even if this includes challenging and unsettling our ingrained habits and perspectives.  If these are unhealthy and skewed in some way surely it is better to 'know the truth about ourselves and be set free'??

I am reminded of a wonderful prayer by George Macdonald:   As for me, I can only fall on my knees and pray that the Lord Christ, who had died for me, might have His own way with me-that it might be worth His while to have done what He did  and what He is doing now for me . To my Elder Brother, my Lord and my God, I give myself yet again, confidently, because He cares to have me and because my every breath is His.  I will be what He wants, who knows all about it and has done everything that I might be His own- a living glory of gladness.

I just love the fullness of trust that this prayer gives voice to, the sheer 'given-over-ness'  to God and his ways and the vision of ourselves as a living glory of gladness.   This is a prayer I hope to say every day this Lent until it seeps into my soul and keeps me curious about what God might do if I really live like this.

Most of humanity's greatest discoveries have come about from someone being curious, asking a question no one had thought of before, setting out on a voyage into the unknown, sometimes at considerable cost and risk to themselves and others.  We see this once again with the renewal of space exploration.

What might you discover this Lent, about your one wild and precious life? (a)

(a) Mary Oliver Summertime)

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