New Day, by Danny Gokey: https://youtu.be/0TrKXehB0pg?si=JA1Xuh0nK4yKAbDY
“He has shown you, O mortal, what is good.
And what does the Lord requireof you?
To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.”
~Micah 6:8~
“Get up! Why do you lie thus on your face?”
~Joshua 7:10~
Lenten intention is about drawing us cross-ward. Parsing this forty-day journey into a daily posture can help us overcome our sometimes-overwhelming responsibilities, or even our mundane and tedious tasks that we are faced with on a menial but no less necessary level. There are times when we are in a groove; other times, when we are in a rut! Being in a groove suggests forward momentum; being in a rut suggests being stuck. Despite our faith-based good intentions, long gray days and hopelessness can drag our joy down.
Lent is a long forty-day journey that takes us to a point in time centered around suffering. Our journey toward it involves meditating on the suffering Christ took on for us. In that suffering, there is hope.
In The Herb of Grace, Elisabeth Goudge’s heroine helps reconcile the contrast—this tension—between suffering and hope, between death and life:
“Lucille was not without hope for the future.
She had lived long enough to know that the spring always comes back.
Also, she knew that if it was to be a flowering spring
one must make one’s preparations.
She was making hers. She herself, she knew, would not see this spring,
but her grandchildren and perhaps her children would,
and it was for them she prepared.
But though they were back in the old grooves
they were back there without the old ardor
What they needed…was the infusion
of some fresh spirit into the old things
that should transform them like wine poured into water.”
We are not without hope, but we need that fresh “infusion” into our menial and mundane, a mental crossing over; a kick in the pants to “get up and get going” on the days it takes more oomph than we feel we’ve got.
Alicia Britt Chole dissects the above command in her book 40 Days of Decrease. In John 14:31, Jesus’ literal command to “Come now, let us leave from here,” is translated from the Greek egeiro [1].The command appears throughout Scripture over 140 times and suggests a transition of position. The Greek word is used when Jesus is speaking to the paralytic, Jairus’s daughter, the widow’s dead son, and the invalid at Bethesda:
He said to the paralyzed man, “Get up.” (Matthew 9:6)
“Little girl, I say to you, get up!” (Mark 5:41)
“Young man, I say to you, get up!” (Luke 7:14)
“Get up! Pick up your mat and walk.” (John 5:8)
These ordinary people, freshly infused by Jesus’ presence, were given a simple command suggestive of simply changing our posture: Get up!
When we feel disappointed by the lack of the miraculous, it is important to remember in our cross-ward journey that obedience to the daily “pick up your cross and follow” is what precedes the miracle. It is like thinking about “the good old days” and giving honor to precious memories, not forgetting that there were trials embedded in those days, as well. We need to heed Jesus’ command, assert ourselves to get up, in order to see the miracle unfold before us as we go about the ordinaries in our lives.
So, when faced with the droll amid the highs of life, do what needs to be done. When faced with the endless rounds of laundry and dishes and sweeping, look for the miracles in the menial. I recently read an article by Savannah Jane McCrary, 4 Lessons from the Life of Brother Andrew, the main takeaways of which were:
- Do what needs to be done.
- Have childlike faith.
- Love the brethren.
- Treasure God’s word.
All echoes of the exhortations from our opening scriptures above! As we near the closure of this Lenten season, may we find cause to rejoice in each New Day as we get up and get going!
[1] Chole, Alicia Britt. 40 Days of Decrease: A Different Kind of Hunger. A Different Kind of Fast. W Publishing Group: Nashville, TN, 2016.
A Walk Down Chamomile Lane 