The One Same Thing

This week is the culmination of Lent. Tonight we “celebrate” together at the Maundy Thursday service.

A question: During this Lenten season, how have you changed?

The Inward/Outward journey (or the Outward/Inward journey for all you extroverts) has been difficult for me. My brain, like most brains, likes to categorize. Things internal remain internal and things external remain external.

Like the chemical attack in Syria. My tendency is to blame politicians and thus keep things external. To internalize those attacks – to dwell on and to feel, the impact of how those attacks might make our brothers and sisters lose hope – that seems like too much for me. Instead, I want to raise my fist at corrupt government. But this attack, for some reason, this attack was different. I let if fill up my heart instead of just my twitter feed. And that changed me.

Or like the fasting I’ve done this Lenten season. Shhh… Don’t brag; don’t tell people you’ve fasted. Or, besides losing those two pounds, it’s all for naught. But this “addition through subtraction,” this physical denial for hoped spiritual abundance, was hard work. And that changed me.

And I hope that change for me has occurred by both the Inward and the Outward moving a little bit closer together.

This week, as we prepare our hearts and build each other up, as we mourn, and as we celebrate – I hope that all of these things become the one same thing.